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HOME  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
OF  MODERN  KNOWLEDGE 

No.  69 


Editors : 

HERBERT    P16HER,  M.A.,  P.B.A. 
Prof.    GILBERT    MURRAY,    LlTT.D., 

LL.D.,  F.B.A. 
Prof.  J.  ARTHUR    THOMSON,  M.A. 
Prof.  WILLIAM   T.  BREWSTER,  M.A. 


A  complete  classified  list  of  the  volumes  of  The 
HoiiB  University  Library  already  published 
will  be  found  at  the  back  of  this  book. 


A  HISTORY 

OF    FREEDOM   OF 

THOUGHT 


BY 
J.  B.  BURY,  M.A.,  F.B.A. 

HON.    D.LITT.    OF   OXFORD,    DURHAM,    AND    DUBLIN,    AND 

HON.    LL.D.   OF  EDINBURGH,   GLASGOW,   AND  ABERDEEN 

UNIVERSITIES  ;  REGIUS  PROFESSOR  OF  MODERN 

HISTORY,  CAMBRIDGE    UNIVERSITY 

AUTHOR  OF  "HISTORY  OF  THE  LATER  ROMAN  EMPIRE" 

"HISTORY  OF  GREECE,"   "HISTORY  OF  THE 

EASTERN  ROMAN  EMPIRE,"   ETC. 


NEW   YORK 
HENRY   HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

LONDON 
WILLIAMS   AND   NORGATE 


Copyright,  1913, 

BY 

HENRY    HOLT   AND    COMPANY 


CONTENTS 

CHAP.  FAGK 

I     Introductory 7 

II     Reason  Free  (Greece  and  Rome)     ....  21 

III  Reason  in  Prison  (The  Middle  Ages)  ...  51 

IV  Prospect  of  Deliverance  (The   Renaissance 

and  the  Reformation) 71 

V     Religious  Toleration 92 

VI    The  Growth    of   Rationalism  (Seventeenth 

and  Eighteenth  Centuries) 127 

VII    The    Progress   of   Rationalism  (Nineteenth 

Century) 176 

VIII     The  Justification  of  Liberty  of  Thought   .  233 

Bibliography 253 

Index 254 


A  HISTORY  OF 
FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

CHAPTER  I 

freedom  of  thought  and  the  forces 
against  it 

(introductory) 

It  is  a  common  saying  that  thought  is  free. 
A  man  can  never  be  hindered  from  thinking 
whatever  he  chooses  so  long  as  he  conceals 
what  he  thinks.  The  working  of  his  mind  is 
limited  only  by  the  bounds  of  his  experience 
and  the  power  of  his  imagination.  But  this 
natural  liberty  of  private  thinking  is  of  little 
value.  It  is  unsatisfactory  and  even  painful 
to  the  thinker  himself,  if  he  is  not  permitted  to 
communicate  his  thoughts  to  others,  and  it 
is  obviously  of  no  value  to  his  neighbours. 
Moreover  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  hide 
thoughts  that  have  any  power  over  the 
mind.  If  a  man's  thinking  leads  him  to  call 
in  question  ideas  and  customs  which  regulate 
the  behaviour  of  those  about  him,  to  reject 
beliefs  which  they  hold,  to  see  better  ways  of 
life   than   those   they   follow,    it   is   almost 

7 


8  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

impossible  for  him,  if  he  is  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  his  own  reasoning,  not  to  betray 
by  silence,  chance  words,  or  general  attitude 
that  he  is  different  from  them  and  does  not 
share  their  opinions.  Some  have  preferred, 
like  Socrates,  some  would  prefer  to-day,  to 
face  death  rather  than  conceal  their  thoughts. 
Thus  freedom  of  thought,  in  any  valuable 
sense,  includes  freedom  of  speech. 

At  present,  in  the  most  civilized  countries, 
freedom  of  speech  is  taken  as  a  matter  of 
course  and  seems  a  perfectly  simple  thing. 
We  are  so  accustomed  to  it  that  we  look  on  it 
as  a  natural  right.  But  this  right  has  been 
acquired  only  in  quite  recent  times,  and  the 
way  to  its  attainment  has  lain  through  lakes 
of  blood.  It  has  taken  centuries  to  persuade 
the  most  enlightened  peoples  that  liberty  to 
publish  one's  opinions  and  to  discuss  all 
questions  is  a  good  and  not  a  bad  thing. 
Human  societies  (there  are  some  brilliant 
exceptions)  have  been  generally  opposed  to 
freedom  of  thought,  or,  in  other  words,  to 
new  ideas,  and  it  is  easy  to  see  why. 

The  average  brain  is  naturally  lazy  and 
tends  to  take  the  line  of  least  resistance.  The 
mental  world  of  the  ordinary  man  consists  of 
beliefs  which  he  has  accepted  without  ques- 
tioning and  to  which  he  is  firmly  attached; 
he  is  instinctively  hostile  to  anything  which 


FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT  9 

would  upset  the  established  order  of  this 
familiar  world.  A  new  idea,  inconsistent 
with  some  of  the  beliefs  which  he  holds, 
means  the  necessity  of  rearranging  his  mind; 
and  this  process  is  laborious,  requiring  a 
painful  expenditure  of  brain-energj'.  To 
him  and  his  fellows,  who  form  the  vast  ma- 
jority, new  ideas,  and  opinions  which  cast 
doubt  on  established  beliefs  and  institutions, 
seem  evil  because  they  are  disagreeable. 

The  repugnance  due  to  mere  mental  lazi- 
ness is  increased  by  a  positive  feeling  of  fear. 
The  conservative  instinct  hardens  into  the 
conservative  doctrine  that  the  foundations  of 
society  are  endangered  by  any  alterations  in 
the  structure.  It  is  only  recently  that  men 
have  been  abandoning  the  belief  that  the 
welfare  of  a  state  depends  on  rigid  stability 
and  on  the  preservation  of  its  traditions  and 
institutions  unchanged.  Wherever  that  be- 
lief prevails,  novel  opinions  are  felt  to  be 
dangerous  as  well  as  annoying,  and  any  one 
who  asks  inconvenient  questions  about  the 
why  and  the  wherefore  of  accepted  prin- 
ciples is  considered  a  pestilent  person. 

The  conservative  instinct,  and  the  conser- 
vative doctrine  which  is  its  consequence,  are 
strengthened  by  superstition.  If  the  social 
structure,  including  the  whole  body  of  cus- 
toms and  opinions,  is  associated  intimately 


10  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

with  religious  belief  and  is  supposed  to  be 
under  divine  patronage,  criticism  of  the  social 
order  savours  of  impiety,  while  criticism  of 
the  religious  belief  is  a  direct  challenge  to  the 
wrath  of  supernatural  powers. 

The  psychological  motives  which  produce 
a  conservative  spirit  hostile  to  new  ideas 
are  reinforced  by  the  active  opposition  of 
certain  powerful  sections  of  the  community, 
such  as  a  class,  a  caste,  or  a  priesthood,  whose 
interests  are  bound  up  with  the  maintenance 
of  the  established  order  and  the  ideas  on 
which  it  rests. 

Let  us  suppose,  for  instance,  that  a  people 
believes  that  solar  eclipses  are  signs  employed 
by  their  Deity  for  the  special  purpose  of  com- 
municating useful  information  to  them,  and 
that  a  clever  man  discovers  the  true  cause  of 
eclipses.  His  compatriots  in  the  first  place 
dislike  his  discovery  because  they  find  it  very 
difficult  to  reconcile  with  their  other  ideas; 
in  the  second  place,  it  disturbs  them,  because 
it  uspets  an  arrangement  which  they  consider 
highly  advantageous  to  their  community; 
finally,  it  frightens  them,  as  an  offence  to 
their  Divinity.  The  priests,  one  of  whose 
functions  is  to  interpret  the  divine  signs,  are 
alarmed  and  enraged  at  a  doctrine  which 
menaces  their  power. 

In  prehistoric  days,  these  motives,  operat- 


FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT  11 

ing  strongly,  must  have  made  change  slow  in 
communities  which  progressed,  and  hindered 
some  communities  from  progressing  at  all. 
But  they  have  continued  to  operate  more  or 
less  throughout  history,  obstructing  knowl- 
edge and  progress.  We  can  observe  them 
at  work  to-day  even  in  the  most  advanced 
societies,  where  they  have  no  longer  the 
power  to  arrest  development  or  repress  the 
publication  of  revolutionary  opinions.  We 
still  meet  people  who  consider  a  new  idea  an 
annoyance  and  probably  a  danger.  Of  those 
to  whom  socialism  is  repugnant,  how  many 
are  there  who  have  never  examined  the 
arguments  for  and  against  it,  but  turn  away 
in  disgust  simply  because  the  notion  disturbs 
their  mental  universe  and  implies  a  drastic 
criticism  on  the  order  of  things  to  which  they 
are  accustomed?  And  how  many  are  there 
who  would  refuse  to  consider  any  proposals 
for  altering  our  imperfect  matrimonial  insti- 
tutions, because  such  an  idea  offends  a  mass 
of  prejudice  associated  with  religious  sanc- 
tions? They  may  be  right  or  not,  but  if  they 
are,  it  is  not  their  fault.  They  are  actuated 
by  the  same  motives  which  were  a  bar  to  prog- 
ress in  primitive  societies.  The  existence  of 
people  of  this  mentality,  reared  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  freedom,  side  by  side  with  others 
who  are  always  looking  out  for  new  ideas  and 


12  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

regretting  that  there  are  not  more  about,  en- 
ables us  to  realize  how,  when  public  opinion 
was  formed  by  the  views  of  such  men,  thought 
was  fettered  and  the  impediments  to  knowl- 
edge enormous. 

Although  the  liberty  to  publish  one's 
opinions  on  any  subject  without  regard  to 
authority  or  the  prejudices  of  one's  neigh- 
bours is  now  a  well-established  principle,  I 
imagine  that  only  the  minority  of  those  who 
would  be  ready  to  fight  to  the  death  rather 
than  surrender  it  could  defend  it  on  rational 
grounds.  We  are  apt  to  take  for  granted 
that  freedom  of  speech  is  a  natural  and  in- 
alienable birthright  of  man,  and  perhaps  to 
think  that  this  is  a  sufficient  answer  to  all  that 
can  be  said  on  the  other  side.  But  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  see  how  such  a  right  can  be  established. 

If  a  man  has  any  "natural  rights,"  the 
right  to  preserve  his  life  and  the  right  to 
reproduce  his  kind  are  certainly  such.  Yet 
human  societies  impose  upon  their  members 
restrictions  in  the  exercise  of  both  these  rights. 
A  starving  man  is  prohibited  from  taking 
food  which  belongs  to  somebody  else.  Pro- 
miscuous reproduction  is  restricted  by  various 
laws  or  customs.  It  is  admitted  that  society 
is  justified  in  restricting  these  elementary 
rights,  because  without  such  restrictions  an 
ordered  society  could  not  exist.     If  then  we 


FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT  13 

concede  that  the  expression  of  opinion  is  a 
right  of  the  same  kind,  it  is  impossible  to 
contend  that  on  this  ground  it  can  claim 
immunity  from  interference  or  that  society 
acts  unjustly  in  regulating  it.  But  the  con- 
cession is  too  large.  For  whereas  in  the  other 
cases  the  limitations  affect  the  conduct  of 
every  one,  restrictions  on  freedom  of  opinion 
affect  only  the  comparatively  small  number 
who  have  any  opinions,  revolutionary  or 
unconventional,  to  express.  The  truth  is 
that  no  valid  argument  can  be  founded  on 
the  conception  of  natural  rights,  because  it 
involves  an  untenable  theory  of  the  relations 
between  society  and  its  members. 

On  the  other  hand,  those  who  have  the 
responsibility  of  governing  a  society  can 
argue  that  it  is  as  incumbent  on  them  to 
prohibit  the  circulation  of  pernicious  opinions 
as  to  prohibit  any  anti-social  actions.  They 
can  argue  that  a  man  may  do  far  more  harm 
by  propagating  anti-social  doctrines  than  by 
stealing  his  neighbour's  horse  or  making  love 
to  his  neighbour's  wife.  They  are  responsible 
for  the  welfare  of  the  State,  and  if  they  are 
convinced  that  an  opinion  is  dangerous,  by 
menacing  the  political,  religious,  or  moral 
assumptions  on  which  the  society  is  based,  it 
is  their  duty  to  protect  society  against  it,  as 
against  any  other  danger. 


14  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

The  true  answer  to  this  argument  for 
limiting  freedom  of  thought  will  appear  in 
due  course.  It  was  far  from  obvious.  A 
long  time  was  needed  to  arrive  at  the  con- 
clusion that  coercion  of  opinion  is  a  mistake, 
and  only  a  part  of  the  world  is  yet  con- 
vinced. That  conclusion,  so  far  as  I  can 
judge,  is  the  most  important  ever  reached 
by  men.  It  was  the  issue  of  a  continuous 
struggle  between  authority  and  reason — the 
subject  of  this  volume.  The  word  author- 
ity requires  some  comment. 

If  you  ask  somebody  how  he  knows  some- 
thing, he  may  say,  "I  have  it  on  good 
authority,"  or,  "I  read  it  in  a  book,"  or,  "It 
is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge,"  or,  "I 
learned  it  at  school."  Any  of  these  replies 
means  that  he  has  accepted  information  from 
others,  trusting  in  their  knowledge,  without 
verifying  their  statements  or  thinking  the 
matter  out  for  himself.  And  the  greater  part 
of  most  men's  knowledge  and  beliefs  is  of 
this  kind,  taken  without  verification  from 
their  parents,  teachers,  acquaintances,  books, 
newspapers.  When  an  English  boy  learns 
French,  he  takes  the  conjugations  and  the 
meanings  of  the  words  on  the  authority  of  his 
teacher  or  his  grammar.  The  fact  that  in  a 
certain  place,  marked  on  the  map,  there  is  a 
populous  city  called  Calcutta,  is  for  most 


FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT  15 

people  a  fact  accepted  on  authority.  So  is 
the  existence  of  Napoleon  or  Julius  Caesar. 
Familiar  astronomical  facts  are  known  only 
in  the  same  way,  except  by  those  who  have 
studied  astronomy.  It  is  obvious  that  every 
one's  knowledge  would  be  very  limited  in- 
deed, if  we  were  not  justified  in  accepting 
facts  on  the  authority  of  others. 

But  we  are  justified  only  under  one  con- 
dition. The  facts  which  we  can  safely  accept 
must  be  capable  of  demonstration  or  verifica- 
tion. The  examples  I  have  given  belong  to 
this  class.  The  boy  can  verify  when  he  goes 
to  France  or  is  able  to  read  a  French  book  that 
the  facts  which  he  took  on  authority  are  true. 
I  am  confronted  every  day  with  evidence 
which  proves  to  me  that,  if  I  took  the  trouble, 
I  could  verify  the  existence  of  Calcutta  for 
myself.  I  cannot  convince  myself  in  this 
way  of  the  existence  of  Napoleon,  but  if  I 
have  doubts  about  it,  a  simple  process  of 
reasoning  shows  me  that  there  are  hosts  of 
facts  which  are  incompatible  with  his  non- 
existence. I  have  no  doubt  that  the  earth  is 
some  93  millions  of  miles  distant  from  the 
sun,  because  all  astronomers  agree  that  it 
has  been  demonstrated,  and  their  agreement 
is  only  explicable  on  the  supposition  that  this 
has  been  demonstrated  and  that,  if  I  took  the 
trouble  to  work  out  the  calculation,  I  should 
reach  the  same  result. 


16  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

But  all  our  mental  furniture  is  not  of  this 
kind.  The  thoughts  of  the  average  man 
consist  not  only  of  facts  open  to  verification, 
but  also  of  many  beliefs  and  opinions  which 
he  has  accepted  on  authority  and  cannot 
verify  or  prove.  Belief  in  the  Trinity  de- 
pends on  the  authority  of  the  Church  and  is 
clearly  of  a  different  order  from  belief  in  the 
existence  of  Calcutta.  We  cannot  go  behind 
the  authority  and  verify  or  prove  it.  If  we 
accept  it,  we  do  so  because  we  have  such 
implicit  faith  in  the  authority  that  we  credit 
its  assertions  though  incapable  of  proof. 

The  distinction  may  seem  so  obvious  as 
to  be  hardly  worth  making.  But  it  is  im- 
portant to  be  quite  clear  about  it.  The 
primitive  man  who  had  learned  from  his 
elders  that  there  were  bears  in  the  hills  and 
likewise  evil  spirits,  soon  verified  the  former 
statement  by  seeing  a  bear,  but  if  he  did  not 
happen  to  meet  an  evil  spirit,  it  did  not  occur 
to  him,  unless  he  was  a  prodigy,  that  there 
was  a  distinction  between  the  two  statements; 
he  would  rather  have  argued,  if  he  argued  at 
all,  that  as  his  tribesmen  were  right  about  the 
bears  they  were  sure  to  be  right  also  about 
the  spirits.  In  the  Middle  Ages  a  man  who 
believed  on  authority  that  there  is  a  city 
called  Constantinople  and  that  comets  are 
portents  signifying  divine  wrath,  would  not 


FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT  17 

distinguish  the  nature  of  the  evidence  in  the 
two  cases.  You  may  still  sometimes  hear 
arguments  amounting  to  this :  since  I  believe 
in  Calcutta  on  authority,  am  I  not  entitled  to 
believe  in  the  Devil  on  authority? 

Now  people  at  all  times  have  been  com- 
manded or  expected  or  invited  to  accept  on 
authority  alone — the  authority,  for  instance, 
of  public  opinion,  or  a  Church,  or  a  sacred 
book — doctrines  which  are  not  proved  or  are 
not  capable  of  proof.  Most  beliefs  about 
nature  and  man,  which  were  not  founded  on 
scientific  observation,  have  served  directly  or 
indirectly  religious  and  social  interests,  and 
hence  they  have  been  protected  by  force 
against  the  criticisms  of  persons  who  have 
the  inconvenient  habit  of  using  their  reason. 
Nobody  minds  if  his  neighbour  disbelieves  a 
demonstrable  fact.  If  a  sceptic  denies  that 
Napoleon  existed,  or  that  water  is  composed 
of  oxygen  and  hydrogen,  he  causes  amuse- 
ment or  ridicule.  But  if  he  denies  doctrines 
which  cannot  be  demonstrated,  such  as  the 
existence  of  a  personal  God  or  the  immortal- 
ity of  the  soul,  he  incurs  serious  disapproba- 
tion and  at  one  time  he  might  have  been  put 
to  death.  Our  mediaeval  friend  would  have 
only  been  called  a  fool  if  he  doubted  the 
existence  of  Constantinople,  but  if  he  had 
questioned    the    significance    of    comets    he 


18  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

might  have  got  into  trouble.  It  is  possible 
that  if  he  had  been  so  mad  as  to  deny  the 
existence  of  Jerusalem  he  would  not  have 
escaped  with  ridicule,  for  Jerusalem  is  men- 
tioned in  the  Bible. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  a  large  field  was 
covered  by  beliefs  which  authority  claimed  to 
impose  as  true,  and  reason  was  warned  off 
the  ground.  But  reason  cannot  recognize 
arbitrary  prohibitions  or  barriers,  without 
being  untrue  to  herself.  The  universe  of  ex- 
perience is  her  province,  and  as  its  parts  are 
all  linked  together  and  interdependent,  it  is 
impossible  for  her  to  recognize  any  territory 
on  which  she  may  not  tread,  or  to  surrender 
any  of  her  rights  to  an  authority  whose  cre- 
dentials she  has  not  examined  and  approved. 

The  uncompromising  assertion  by  reason 
of  her  absolute  rights  throughout  the  whole 
domain  of  thought  is  termed  rationalism,  and 
the  slight  stigma  which  is  still  attached  to  the 
word  reflects  the  bitterness  of  the  struggle 
between  reason  and  the  forces  arrayed  against 
her.  The  term  is  limited  to  the  field  of 
theology,  because  it  was  in  that  field  that  the 
self-assertion  of  reason  was  most  violently 
and  pertinaciously  opposed.  In  the  same 
way  free  thought,  the  refusal  of  thought  to  be 
controlled  by  any  authority  but  its  own,  has  a 
definitely  theological  reference.     Throughout 


FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT  19 

the  conflict,  authority  has  had  great  advan- 
tages. At  any  time  the  people  who  really 
care  about  reason  have  been  a  small  minority, 
and  probably  will  be  so  for  a  long  time 
to  come.  Reason's  only  weapon  has  been 
argument.  Authority  has  employed  physical 
and  moral  violence,  legal  coercion  and  social 
displeasure.  Sometimes  she  has  attempted 
to  use  the  sword  of  her  adversary,  thereby 
wounding  herself.  Indeed  the  weakest  point 
in  the  strategical  position  of  authority  was 
that  her  champions,  being  human,  could  not 
help  making  use  of  reasoning  processes  and 
the  result  was  that  they  were  divided  among 
themselves.  This  gave  reason  her  chance. 
Operating,  as  it  were,  in  the  enemy's  camp 
and  professedly  in  the  enemy's  cause,  she 
was  preparing  her  own  victory. 

It  may  be  objected  that  there  is  a  legitimate 
domain  for  authority,  consisting  of  doctrines 
which  lie  outside  human  experience  and 
therefore  cannot  be  proved  or  verified,  but 
at  the  same  time  cannot  be  disproved.  Of 
course,  any  number  of  propositions  can  be  in- 
vented which  cannot  be  disproved,  and  it  is 
open  to  any  one  who  possesses  exuberant  faith 
to  believe  them ;  but  no  one  will  maintain  that 
they  all  deserve  credence  so  long  as  their 
falsehood  is  not  demonstrated.  And  if  only 
some  deserve  credence,  who,  except  reason, 

< 


20  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

is  to  decide  which?  If  the  reply  is,  Au- 
thority, we  are  confronted  by  the  difficulty 
that  many  beliefs  backed  by  authority  have 
been  finally  disproved  and  are  universally 
abandoned.  Yet  some  people  speak  as  if  we 
were  not  justified  in  rejecting  a  theological 
doctrine  unless  we  can  prove  it  false.  But 
the  burden  of  proof  does  not  lie  upon  the 
rejecter.  I  remember  a  conversation  in 
which,  when  some  disrespectful  remark  was 
made  about  hell,  a  loyal  friend  of  that  estab- 
lishment said  triumphantly,  "But,  absurd  as 
it  may  seem,  you  cannot  disprove  it."  If  you 
were  told  that  in  a  certain  planet  revolving 
round  Sirius  there  is  a  race  of  donkeys  who 
talk  the  English  language  and  spend  their 
time  in  discussing  eugenics,  you  could  not 
disprove  the  statement,  but  would  it,  on  that 
account,  have  any  claim  to  be  believed? 
Some  minds  would  be  prepared  to  accept  it, 
if  it  were  reiterated  often  enough,  through 
the  potent  force  of  suggestion.  This  force, 
exercised  largely  by  emphatic  repetition  (the 
theoretical  basis,  as  has  been  observed,  of  the 
modern  practice  of  advertising),  has  played 
a  great  part  in  establishing  authoritative 
opinions  and  propagating  religious  creeds. 
Reason  fortunately  is  able  to  avail  herself  of 
the  same  help. 

The  following  sketch  is  confined  to  "Western 


REASON  FREE  21 

civilization.  It  begins  with  Greece  and 
attempts  to  indicate  the  chief  phases.  It  is 
the  merest  introduction  to  a  vast  and  intricate 
subject,  which,  treated  adequately,  would 
involve  not  only  the  history  of  religion,  of  the 
Churches,  of  heresies,  of  persecution,  but  also 
the  history  of  philosophy,  of  the  natural 
sciences  and  of  political  theories.  From  the 
sixteenth  century  to  the  French  Revolution 
nearly  all  important  historical  events  bore  in 
some  way  on  the  struggle  for  freedom  of 
thought.  It  would  require  a  lifetime  to 
calculate,  and  many  books  to  describe,  all  the 
directions  and  interactions  of  the  intellectual 
and  social  forces  which,  since  the  fall  of 
ancient  civilization,  have  hindered  and  helped 
the  emancipation  of  reason.  All  one  can  do, 
all  one  could  do  even  in  a  much  bigger  volume 
than  this,  is  to  indicate  the  general  course  of 
the  struggle  and  dwell  on  some  particular 
aspects  which  the  writer  may  happen  to  have 
specially  studied. 

CHAPTER  II 

REASON    FREE 
(GREECE   AND   ROME) 

When  we  are  asked  to  specify  the  debt 
which  civilization  owes  to  the  Greeks,  their 


22  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

achievements  in  literature  and  art  naturally 
occur  to  us  first  of  all.  But  a  truer  answer 
may  be  that  our  deepest  gratitude  is  due  to 
them  as  the  originators  of  liberty  of  thought 
and  discussion.  For  this  freedom  of  spirit 
was  not  only  the  condition  of  their  specula- 
tions in  philosophy,  their  progress  in  science, 
their  experiments  in  political  institutions;  it. 
was  also  a  condition  of  their  literary  and  ar- 
tistic excellence.  Their  literature,  for  in- 
stance, could  not  have  been  what  it  is  if  thej 
had  been  debarred  from  free  criticism  of  life. 
But  apart  from  what  they  actually  accom- 
plished, even  if  they  had  not  achieved  the 
wonderful  things  they  did  in  most  of  the 
realms  of  human  activity,  their  assertion  of 
the  principle  of  liberty  would  place  them  ir, 
the  highest  rank  among  the  benefactors  of  the 
race;  for  it  was  one  of  the  greatest  steps  in 
human  progress. 

We  do  not  know  enough  about  the  earliest 
history  of  the  Greeks  to  explain  how  it  was 
that  they  attained  their  free  outlook  upon 
the  world  and  came  to  possess  the  will  and 
courage  to  set  no  bounds  to  the  range  of  their 
criticism  and  curiosity.  We  have  to  take 
this  character  as  a  fact.  But  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  Greeks  consisted  of  a  large 
number  of  separate  peoples,  who  varied 
largely  in  temper,  customs  and  traditions, 


REASON   FREE  23 

though  they  had  important  features  common 
to  all.  Some  were  conservative,  or  backward, 
or  unintellectual  compared  with  others.  In 
this  chapter  "the  Greeks"  does  not  mean  all 
the  Greeks,  but  only  those  who  count  most 
in  the  history  of  civilization,  especially  the 
Ionians  and  Athenians. 

Ionia  in  Asia  Minor  was  the  cradle  of  free 
speculation.  The  history  of  European  sci- 
ence and  European  philosophy  begins  in 
Ionia.  Here  (in  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries 
B.C.)  the  early  philosophers  by  using  their 
reason  sought  to  penetrate  into  the  origin  and 
structure  of  the  world.  They  could  not  of 
course  free  their  minds  entirely  from  received 
notions,  but  they  began  the  work  of  destroy- 
ing orthodox  views  and  religious  faiths. 
Xenophanes  may  specially  be  named  among 
these  pioneers  of  thought  (though  he  was  not 
the  most  important  or  the  ablest),  because 
the  toleration  of  his  teaching  illustrates  the 
freedom  of  the  atmosphere  in  which  these  men 
lived.  He  went  about  from  city  to  city, 
calling  in  question  on  moral  grounds  the 
popular  beliefs  about  the  gods  and  goddesses, 
and  ridiculing  the  anthropomorphic  concep- 
tions which  the  Greeks  had  formed  of  their 
divinities.  "If  oxen  had  hands  and  the 
capacities  of  men,  they  would  make  gods  in 
the  shape  of  oxen."    This  attack  on  received 


24  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

theology  was  an  attack  on  the  veracity  of  the 
old  poets,  especially  Homer,  who  was  con- 
sidered the  highest  authority  on  mythology. 
Xenophanes  criticized  him  severely  for  ascrib- 
ing to  the  gods  acts  which,  committed  by  men, 
would  be  considered  highly  disgraceful.  We 
do  not  hear  that  any  attempt  was  made  to 
restrain  him  from  thus  assailing  traditional 
beliefs  and  branding  Homer  as  immoral.  We 
must  remember  that  the  Homeric  poems  were 
never  supposed  to  be  the  word  of  God.  It 
has  been  said  that  Homer  was  the  Bible  of  the 
Greeks.  The  remark  exactly  misses  the  truth . 
The  Greeks  fortunately  had  no  Bible,  and  this 
fact  was  both  an  expression  and  an  important 
condition  of  their  freedom.  Homer's  poems 
were  secular,  not  religious,  and  it  may  be 
noted  that  they  are  freer  from  immorality  and 
savagery  than  sacred  books  that  one  could 
mention.  Their  authority  was  immense;  but 
it  was  not  binding  like  the  authority  of  a 
sacred  book,  and  so  Homeric  criticism  was 
never  hampered  like  Biblical  criticism. 

In  this  connexion,  notice  may  be  taken  of 
another  expression  and  condition  of  freedom, 
the  absence  of  sacerdotalism.  The  priests  of 
the  temples  never  became  powerful  castes, 
tyrannizing  over  the  community  in  their  own 
interests  and  able  to  silence  voices  raised 
against  religious  beliefs.    The  civil  authorities 


REASON  FREE  25 

kept  the  general  control  of  public  worship  in 
their  own  hands,  and,  if  some  priestly  fam- 
ilies might  have  considerable  influence,  yet  as 
a  rule  the  priests  were  virtually  State  servants 
whose  voice  carried  no  weight  except  con- 
cerning the  technical  details  of  ritual. 

To  return  to  the  early  philosophers,  who 
were  mostly  materialists,  the  record  of  their 
speculations  is  an  interesting  chapter  in  the 
history  of  rationalism.  Two  great  names 
may  be  selected,  Heraclitus  and  Democritus, 
because  they  did  more  perhaps  than  any  of 
the  others,  by  sheer  hard  thinking,  to  train 
reason  to  look  upon  the  universe  in  new  ways 
and  to  shock  the  unreasoned  conceptions  of 
common  sense.  It  was  startling  to  be  taught, 
for  the  first  time,  by  Heraclitus,  that  the 
appearance  of  stability  and  permanence  which 
material  things  present  to  our  senses  is  a  false 
appearance,  and  that  the  world  and  every- 
thing in  it  are  changing  every  instant. 
Democritus  performed  the  amazing  feat  of 
working  out  an  atomic  theory  of  the  universe, 
which  was  revived  in  the  seventeenth  century 
and  is  connected,  in  the  history  of  specula- 
tion, with  the  most  modern  physical  and 
chemical  theories  of  matter.  No  fantastic 
tales  of  creation,  imposed  by  sacred  authority, 
hampered  these  powerful  brains. 

All  this  philosophical  speculation  prepared 


26  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

the  way  for  the  educationalists  who  were 
known  as  the  Sophists.  They  begin  to  appear 
after  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century.  They 
worked  here  and  there  throughout  Greece, 
constantly  travelling,  training  young  men  for 
public  life,  and  teaching  them  to  use  their 
reason.  As  educators  they  had  practical  ends 
in  view.  They  turned  away  from  the  prob- 
lems of  the  physical  universe  to  the  problems 
of  human  life — morality  and  politics.  Here 
they  were  confronted  with  the  difficulty  of 
distinguishing  between  truth  and  error,  and 
the  ablest  of  them  investigated  the  nature 
of  knowledge,  the  method  of  reason — logic — 
and  the  instrument  of  reason — speech.  What- 
ever their  particular  theories  might  be,  their 
general  spirit  was  that  of  free  inquiry  and 
discussion.  They  sought  to  test  everything 
by  reason.  The  second  half  of  the  fifth  cen- 
tury might  be  called  the  age  of  Illumination. 
It  may  be  remarked  that  the  knowledge 
of  foreign  countries  which  the  Greeks  had 
acquired  had  a  considerable  effect  in  promot- 
ing a  sceptical  attitude  towards  authority. 
When  a  man  is  acquainted  only  with  the 
habits  of  his  own  country,  they  seem  so  much 
a  matter  of  course  that  he  ascribes  them  to 
nature,  but  when  he  travels  abroad  and  finds 
totally  different  habits  and  standards  of 
conduct  prevailing,  he  begins  to  understand 


REASON  FREE  27 

the  power  of  custom;  and  learns  that  moral- 
ity and  religion  are  matters  of  latitude. 
This  discovery  tends  to  weaken  authority, 
and  to  raise  disquieting  reflections,  as  in  the 
case  of  one  who,  brought  up  as  a  Christian, 
comes  to  realize  that,  if  he  had  been  born  on 
the  Ganges  or  the  Euphrates,  he  would  have 
firmly  believed  in  entirely  different  dogmas. 
Of  course  these  movements  of  intellectual 
freedom  were,  as  in  all  ages,  confined  to  the 
minority.  Everywhere  the  masses  were  ex- 
ceedingly superstitious.  They  believed  that 
the  safety  of  their  cities  depended  on  the 
good-will  of  their  gods.  If  this  superstitious 
spirit  were  alarmed,  there  was  always  a 
danger  that  philosophical  speculations  might 
be  persecuted.  And  this  occurred  in  Athens. 
About  the  middle  of  the  fifth  century  Athens 
had  not  only  become  the  most  powerful  State 
in  Greece,  but  was  also  taking  the  highest 
place  in  literature  and  art.  She  was  a  full- 
fledged  democracy.  Political  discussion  was 
perfectly  free.  At  this  time  she  was  guided 
by  the  statesman  Pericles,  who  was  person- 
ally a  freethinker,  or  at  least  was  in  touch 
with  all  the  subversive  speculations  of  the 
day.  He  was  especially  intimate  with  the 
philosopher  Anaxagoras  who  had  come  from 
Ionia  to  teach  at  Athens.  In  regard  to  the 
popular  gods  Anaxagoras  was  a  thorough- 


28  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

going  unbeliever.  The  political  enemies  of 
Pericles  struck  at  him  by  attacking  his  friend. 
They  introduced  and  carried  a  blasphemy 
law,  to  the  effect  that  unbelievers  and  those 
who  taught  theories  about  the  celestial  world 
might  be  impeached.  It  was  easy  to  prove 
that  Anaxagoras  was  a  blasphemer  who 
taught  that  the  gods  were  abstractions  and 
that  the  sun,  to  which  the  ordinary  Athenian 
said  prayers  morning  and  evening,  was  a  mass 
of  flaming  matter.  The  influence  of  Pericles 
saved  him  from  death;  he  was  heavily  fined 
and  left  Athens  for  Lampsacus,  where  he  was 
treated  with  consideration  and  honour. 

Other  cases  are  recorded  which  show  that 
anti-religious  thought  was  liable  to  be  perse- 
cuted. Protagoras,  one  of  the  greatest  of  the 
Sophists,  published  a  book  On  the  Gods, 
the  object  of  which  seems  to  have  been  to 
prove  that  one  cannot  know  the  gods  by 
reason.  The  first  words  ran:  "Concerning 
the  gods,  I  cannot  say  that  they  exist  nor 
yet  that  they  do  not  exist.  There  are  more 
reasons  than  one  why  we  cannot  know. 
There  is  the  obscurity  of  the  subject  and  there 
is  the  brevity  of  human  life."  A  charge  of 
blasphemy  was  lodged  against  him  and  he  fled 
from  Athens.  But  there  was  no  systematic 
policy  of  suppressing  free  thought.  Copies 
of  the  work  of  Protagoras  were  collected  and 


REASON  FREE  29 

burned,  but  the  book  of  Anaxagoras  setting 
forth  the  views  for  which  he  had  been  con- 
demned was  for  sale  on  the  Athenian  book- 
stalls at  a  popular  price.  Rationalistic  ideas 
moreover  were  venturing  to  appear  on  the 
stage,  though  the  dramatic  performances,  at 
the  feasts  of  the  god  Dionysus,  were  religious 
solemnities.  The  poet  Euripides  was  satu- 
rated with  modern  speculation,  and,  while 
different  opinions  may  be  held  as  to  the  ten- 
dencies of  some  of  his  tragedies,  he  often  al- 
lows his  characters  to  express  highly  unortho- 
dox views.  He  was  prosecuted  for  impiety 
by  a  popular  politician.  We  may  suspect 
that  during  the  last  thirty  years  of  the  fifth 
century  unorthodoxy  spread  considerably 
among  the  educated  classes.  There  was  a 
large  enough  section  of  influential  rationalists 
to  render  impossible  any  organized  repression 
of  liberty,  and  the  chief  evil  of  the  blasphemy 
law  was  that  it  could  be  used  for  personal 
or  party  reasons.  Some  of  the  prosecutions, 
about  which  we  know,  were  certainly  due  to 
such  motives,  others  may  have  been  prompted 
by  genuine  bigotry  and  by  the  fear  lest 
sceptical  thought  should  extend  beyond  the 
highly  educated  and  leisured  class.  It  was 
a  generally  accepted  principle  among  the 
Greeks,  and  afterwards  among  the  Romans,  ' 
that  religion  was  a  good  and  necessary  thing 


SO  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

for  the  common  people.  Men  who  did  not 
believe  in  its  truth  believed  in  its  usefulness 
as  a  political  institution,  and  as  a  rule  phi- 
losophers did  not  seek  to  diffuse  disturbing 
"truth"  among  the  masses.  It  was  the  cus- 
tom, much  more  than  at  the  present  day,  for 
those  who  did  not  believe  in  the  established 
cults  to  conform  to  them  externally.  Popu- 
lar higher  education  was  not  an  article  in  the 
programme  of  Greek  statesmen  or  thinkers. 
And  perhaps  it  may  be  argued  that  in  the 
circumstances  of  the  ancient  world  it  would 
have  been  hardly  practicable. 

There  was,  however,  one  illustrious  Athe- 
nian, who  thought  differently — Socrates,  the 
philosopher.  Socrates  was  the  greatest  of 
the  educationalists,  but  unlike  the  others  he 
taught  gratuitously,  though  he  was  a  poor 
man.  His  teaching  always  took  the  form  of 
discussion;  the  discussion  often  ended  in  no 
positive  result,  but  had  the  effect  of  showing 
that  some  received  opinion  was  untenable 
and  that  truth  is  difficult  to  ascertain.  He 
had  indeed  certain  definite  views  about 
knowledge  and  virtue,  which  are  of  the 
highest  importance  in  the  history  of  philos- 
ophy, but  for  our  present  purpose  his  sig- 
nificance lies  in  his  enthusiasm  for  discus- 
sion and  criticism.  He  taught  those  with 
whom  he  conversed — and  he  conversed  in- 


REASON  FREE  31 

discriminately  with  all  who  would  listen  to 
him — to  bring  all  popular  beliefs  before  the 
bar  of  reason,  to  approach  every  inquiry 
with  an  open  mind,  and  not  to  judge  by  the 
opinion  of  majorities  or  the  dictate  of  au- 
thority; in  short  to  seek  for  other  tests  of  the 
truth  of  an  opinion  than  the  fact  that  it  is 
held  by  a  great  many  people.  Among  his 
disciples  were  all  the  young  men  who  were  to 
become  the  leading  philosophers  of  the  next 
generation  and  some  who  played  prominent 
parts  in  Athenian  history. 

If  the  Athenians  had  had  a  daily  press, 
Socrates  would  have  been  denounced  by  the 
journalists  as  a  dangerous  person.  They  had 
a  comic  drama,  which  constantly  held  up  to 
ridicule  philosophers  and  sophists  and  their 
vain  doctrines.  We  possess  one  play  (the 
Clouds  of  Aristophanes)  in  which  Socrates 
is  pilloried  as  a  typical  representative  of 
impious  and  destructive  speculations.  Apart 
from  annoyances  of  this  kind,  Socrates 
reached  old  age,  pursuing  the  task  of  instruct- 
ing his  fellow-citizens,  without  any  evil 
befalling  him.  Then,  at  the  age  of  seventy, 
he  was  prosecuted  as  an  atheist  and  corrupter 
of  youth  and  was  put  to  death  (399  B.C.). 
It  is  strange  that  if  the  Athenians  really 
thought  him  dangerous  they  should  have 
suffered  him  so  long.     There  can,  I  think,  be 


32  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

little  doubt  that  the  motives  of  the  accusation 
were  political.1  Socrates,  looking  at  things 
as  he  did,  could  not  be  sympathetic  with 
unlimited  democracy,  or  approve  of  the  prin- 
ciple that  the  will  of  the  ignorant  majority 
was  a  good  guide.  He  was  probably  known 
to  sympathize  with  those  who  wished  to  limit 
the  franchise.  When,  after  a  struggle  in 
which  the  constitution  had  been  more  than 
once  overthrown,  democracy  emerged  tri- 
umphant (403  B.C.),  there  was  a  bitter  feeling 
against  those  who  had  not  been  its  friends, 
and  of  these  disloyal  persons  Socrates  was 
chosen  as  a  victim.  If  he  had  wished,  he 
could  easily  have  escaped.  If  he  had  given 
an  undertaking  to  teach  no  more,  he  would 
almost  certainly  have  been  acquitted.  As 
it  was,  of  the  501  ordinary  Athenians  who 
were  his  judges,  a  very  large  minority  voted 
for  his  acquittal.  Even  then,  if  he  had 
adopted  a  different  tone,  he  would  not  have 
been  condemned  to  death. 

He  rose  to  the  great  occasion  and  vindi- 
cated freedom  of  discussion  in  a  wonder- 
ful unconventional  speech.  The  Apology  of 
Socrates,  which  was  composed  by  his  most 
brilliant  pupil,  Plato  the  philosopher,  repro- 

1  This  has  been  shown  very  clearly  by  Professor 
Jackson  in  the  article  on  "Socrates"  in  the  Encyclo- 
paedia Britannica,  last  edition. 


REASON  FREE  S3 

duces  the  general  tenor  of  his  defence.  It  is 
clear  that  he  was  not  able  to  meet  satis- 
factorily the  charge  that  he  did  not  acknowl- 
edge the  gods  worshipped  by  the  city,  and 
bis  explanations  on  this  point  are  the  weak 
part  of  his  speech.  But  he  met  the  accusa- 
tion that  he  corrupted  the  minds  of  the  young 
by  a  splendid  plea  for  free  discussion.  This 
is  the  most  valuable  section  of  the  Apology; 
it  is  as  impressive  to-day  as  ever.  I  think  the 
two  principal  points  which  he  makes  are 
these — 

(1)  He  maintains  that  the  individual 
should  at  any  cost  refuse  to  be  coerced  by  any 
human  authority  or  tribunal  into  a  course 
which  his  own  mind  condemns  as  wrong. 
That  is,  he  asserts  the  supremacy  of  the  indi- 
vidual conscience,  as  we  should  say,  over 
human  law.  He  represents  his  own  life- 
work  as  a  sort  of  religious  quest;  he  feels  con- 
vinced that  in  devoting  himself  to  philo- 
sophical discussion  he  has  done  the  bidding 
of  a  super-human  guide;  and  he  goes  to  death 
rather  than  be  untrue  to  this  personal  con- 
viction. "If  you  propose  to  acquit  me,"  he 
says,  "on  condition  that  I  abandon  my  search 
for  truth,  I  will  say:  I  thank  you,  O  Athe- 
nians, but  I  will  obey  God,  who,  as  I  believe, 
set  me  this  task,  rather  than  you,  and  so  long 
as  I  have  breath  and  strength  I  will  never 


84  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

cease  from  my  occupation  with  philosophy. 
I  will  continue  the  practice  of  accosting 
whomever  I  meet  and  saying  to  him,  'Are 
you  not  ashamed  of  setting  your  heart  on 
wealth  and  honours  while  you  have  no  care 
for  wisdom  and  truth  and  making  your  soul 
better?'  I  know  not  what  death  is — it  may 
be  a  good  thing,  and  I  am  not  afraid  of  it. 
But  I  do  know  that  it  is  a  bad  thing  to  desert 
one's  post  and  I  prefer  what  may  be  good  to 
what  I  know  to  be  bad." 

(2)  He  insists  on  the  public  value  of  free 
discussion.  "In  me  you  have  a  stimulating 
critic,  persistently  urging  you  with  persuasion 
and  reproaches,  persistently  testing  your 
opinions  and  trying  to  show  you  that  you  are 
really  ignorant  of  what  you  suppose  you 
know.  Daily  discussion  of  the  matters  about 
which  you  hear  me  conversing  is  the  highest 
good  for  man.  Life  that  is  not  tested  by  such 
discussion  is  not  worth  living." 

Thus  in  what  we  may  call  the  earliest 
justification  of  liberty  of  thought  we  have 
two  significant  claims  affirmed:  the  inde- 
feasible right  of  the  conscience  of  the  in- 
dividual— a  claim  on  which  later  struggles 
for  liberty  were  to  turn;  and  the  social 
importance  of  discussion  and  criticism.  The 
former  claim  is  not  based  on  argument  but 
on  intuition;   it  rests  in  fact  on  the  assump- 


REASON  FREE  35 

tion  of  some  sort  of  superhuman  moral 
principle,  and  to  those  who,  not  having  the 
same  personal  experience  as  Socrates,  reject 
this  assumption,  his  pleading  does  not  carry 
weight.  The  second  claim,  after  the  experi- 
ence of  more  than  2,000  years,  can  be  formu- 
lated more  comprehensively  now  with  bear- 
ings of  which  he  did  not  dream. 

The  circumstances  of  the  trial  of  Socrates 
illustrate  both  the  tolerance  and  the  intoler- 
ance which  prevailed  at  Athens.  His  long 
immunity,  the  fact  that  he  was  at  last  in- 
dicted from  political  motives  and  perhaps  per- 
sonal also,  the  large  minority  in  his  favour, 
all  show  that  thought  was  normally  free,  and 
that  the  mass  of  intolerance  which  existed 
was  only  fitfully  invoked,  and  perhaps  most 
often  to  serve  other  purposes.  I  may  men- 
tion the  case  of  the  philosopher  Aristotle, 
who  some  seventy  years  later  left  Athens 
because  he  was  menaced  by  a  prosecution 
for  blasphemy,  the  charge  being  a  pretext 
for  attacking  one  who  belonged  to  a  certain 
political  party.  The  persecution  of  opinion 
was  never  organized. 

It  may  seem  curious  that  to  find  the 
persecuting  spirit  in  Greece  we  have  to  turn 
to  the  philosophers.  Plato,  the  most  brilliant 
disciple  of  Socrates,  constructed  in  his  later 
years  an  ideal  State.    In  this  State  he  insti- 


36  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

tuted  a  religion  considerably  different  from 
the  current  religion,  and  proposed  to  compel 
all  the  citizens  to  believe  in  his  gods  on  pain 
of  death  or  imprisonment.  All  freedom  of 
discussion  was  excluded  under  the  cast-iron 
system  which  he  conceived.  But  the  point 
of  interest  in  his  attitude  is  that  he  did  not 
care  much  whether  a  religion  was  true,  but 
only  whether  it  was  morally  useful;  he  was 
prepared  to  promote  morality  by  edifying 
fables;  and  he  condemned  the  popular 
mythology  not  because  it  was  false,  but 
because  it  did  not  make  for  righteousness. 

The  outcome  of  the  large  freedom  per- 
mitted at  Athens  was  a  series  of  philosophies 
which  had  a  common  source  in  the  conver- 
sations of  Socrates.  Plato,  Aristotle,  the 
Stoics,  the  Epicureans,  the  Sceptics — it  may 
be  maintained  that  the  efforts  of  thought 
represented  by  these  names  have  had  a 
deeper  influence  on  the  progress  of  man  than 
any  other  continuous  intellectual  movement, 
at  least  until  the  rise  of  modern  science  in  a 
new  epoch  of  liberty. 

The  doctrines  of  the  Epicureans,  Stoics,  and 
Sceptics  all  aimed  at  securing  peace  and 
guidance  for  the  individual  soul.  They  were 
widely  propagated  throughout  the  Greek 
world  from  the  third  century  B.C.,  and  we 
may  say  that  from  this  time  onward  most 


REASON  FREE  37 

well-educated  Greeks  were  more  or  less 
rationalists.  The  teaching  of  Epicurus  had 
a  distinct  anti-religious  tendency.  He  con- 
sidered fear  to  be  the  fundamental  motive  of 
religion,  and  to  free  men's  minds  from  this 
fear  was  a  principal  object  of  his  teaching. 
He  was  a  Materialist,  explaining  the  world  by 
the  atomic  theory  of  Democritus  and  denying 
any  divine  government  of  the  universe.1  He 
did  indeed  hold  the  existence  of  gods,  but, 
so  far  as  men  are  concerned,  his  gods  are  as 
if  they  were  not — living  in  some  remote 
abode  and  enjoying  a  "sacred  and  everlasting 
calm."  They  just  served  as  an  example  of 
the  realization  of  the  ideal  Epicurean  life. 

There  was  something  in  this  philosophy 
which  had  the  power  to  inspire  a  poet  of 
singular  genius  to  expound  it  in  verse.  The 
Roman  Lucretius  (first  century  B.C.)  regarded 
Epicurus  as  the  great  deliverer  of  the  human 
race  and  determined  to  proclaim  the  glad 
tidings  of  his  philosophy  in  a  poem  On  the 
Nature  of  the  World.2    With  all  the  fervour 

1  He  stated  the  theological  difficulty  as  to  the  origin 
of  evil  in  this  form :  God  either  wishes  to  abolish  evil  and 
cannot,  or  can  and  will  not,  or  neither  can  nor  will,  or 
both  can  and  will.  The  first  three  are  unthinkable,  if 
he  is  a  God  worthy  of  the  name;  therefore  the  last  alterna- 
tive must  be  true.  Why  then  does  evil  exist?  The 
inference  is  that  there  is  no  God,  in  the  sense  of  a  governor 
of  the  world. 

2  An  admirable  appreciation  of  the  poem  will  be 
found  in  R.  Y.  Tyrrell's  Lectures  on  Latin  Poetry. 


SS  FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT 

of  a  religious  enthusiast  he  denounces  religion, 
sounding  every  note  of  defiance,  loathing, 
and  contempt,  and  branding  in  burning  words 
the  crimes  to  which  it  had  urged  man  on.  He 
rides  forth  as  a  leader  of  the  hosts  of  atheism 
against  the  walls  of  heaven.  He  explains  the 
scientific  arguments  as  if  they  were  the 
radiant  revelation  of  a  new  world;  and  the 
rapture  of  his  enthusiasm  is  a  strange  accom- 
paniment of  a  doctrine  which  aimed  at  per- 
fect calm.  Although  the  Greek  thinkers  had 
done  all  the  work  and  the  Latin  poem  is  a 
hymn  of  triumph  over  prostrate  deities,  yet 
in  the  literature  of  free  thought  it  must  al- 
ways hold  an  eminent  place  by  the  sincerity 
of  its  audacious,  defiant  spirit.  In  the  his- 
tory of  rationalism  its  interest  would  be 
greater  if  it  had  exploded  in  the  midst  of  an 
orthodox  community.  But  the  educated 
Romans  in  the  days  of  Lucretius  were  scep- 
tical in  religious  matters,  some  of  them  were 
Epicureans,  and  we  may  suspect  that  not 
many  of  those  who  read  it  were  shocked  or 
influenced  by  the  audacities  of  the  cham- 
pion of  irreligion. 

The  Stoic  philosophy  made  notable  con- 
tributions to  the  cause  of  liberty  and  could 
hardly  have  flourished  in  an  atmosphere 
where  discussion  was  not  free.  It  asserted 
the    rights    of    individuals    against    public 


REASON   FREE  39 

authority.  Socrates  had  seen  that  laws  may 
be  unjust  and  that  peoples  may  go  wrong, 
but  he  had  found  no  principle  for  the  guid- 
ance of  society.  The  Stoics  discovered  it  in 
the  law  of  nature,  prior  and  superior  to  all 
the  customs  and  written  laws  of  peoples,  and 
this  doctrine,  spreading  outside  Stoic  circles, 
caught  hold  of  the  Roman  world  and  affected 
Roman  legislation. 

These  philosophies  have  carried  us  from 
Greece  to  Rome.  In  the  later  Roman  Re- 
public and  the  early  Empire,  no  restrictions 
were  imposed  on  opinion,  and  these  philoso- 
phies, which  made  the  individual  the  first 
consideration,  spread  widely.  Most  of  the 
leading  men  were  unbelievers  in  the  official 
religion  of  the  State,  but  they  considered  it 
valuable  for  the  purpose  of  keeping  the  un- 
educated populace  in  order.  A  Greek  his- 
torian expresses  high  approval  of  the  Roman 
policy  of  cultivating  superstition  for  the 
benefit  of  the  masses.  This  was  the  attitude 
of  Cicero,  and  the  view  that  a  false  religion 
is  indispensable  as  a  social  machine  was  gen- 
eral among  ancient  unbelievers.  It  is  common, 
in  one  form  or  another,  to-day;  at  least,  re- 
ligions are  constantly  defended  on  the  ground 
not  of  truth  but  of  utility.  This  defence  be- 
longs to  the  statecraft  of  Machiavelli,  who 
taught  that  religion  is  necessary  for  govern- 


40  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

ment,  and  that  it  may  be  the  duty  of  a  ruler  to 
support  a  religion  which  he  believes  to  be  false. 

A  word  must  be  said  of  Lucian  (second 
century  a.d.),  the  last  Greek  man  of  letters 
whose  writings  appeal  to  everybody.  He 
attacked  the  popular  mythology  with  open 
ridicule.  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  his 
satires  had  any  effect  at  the  time  beyond 
affording  enjoyment  to  educated  infidels  who 
read  them.  Zeus  in  a  Tragedy  Part  is  one 
of  the  most  effective.  The  situation  which 
Lucian  imagined  here  would  be  paralleled  if  a 
modern  writer  were  blasphemously  to  repre- 
sent the  Persons  of  the  Trinity  with  some 
eminent  angels  and  saints  discussing  in  a 
celestial  smoke-room  the  alarming  growth  of 
unbelief  in  England  and  then  by  means  of  a 
telephonic  apparatus  overhearing  a  dispute 
between  a  freethinker  and  a  parson  on  a 
public  platform  in  London.  The  absurdities 
of  anthropomorphism  have  never  been  the 
subject  of  more  brilliant  jesting  than  in 
Lucian's  satires. 

The  general  rule  of  Roman  policy  was  to 
tolerate  throughout  the  Empire  all  religions 
and  all  opinions.  Blasphemy  was  not  pun- 
ished. The  principle  was  expressed  in  the 
maxim  of  the  Emperor  Tiberius:  "If  the 
gods  are  insulted,  let  them  see  to  it  them- 
selves."   An  exception  to  the  rule  of  tolerance 


REASON  FREE  41 

was  made  in  the  case  of  the  Christian  sect,  and 
the  treatment  of  this  Oriental  religion  may 
be  said  to  have  inaugurated  religious  perse- 
cution in  Europe.  It  is  a  matter  of  interest 
to  understand  why  Emperors  who  were  able, 
humane,  and  not  in  the  least  fanatical, 
adopted  this  exceptional  policy. 

For  a  long  time  the  Christians  were  only 
known  to  those  Romans  who  happened  to 
hear  of  them,  as  a  sect  of  the  Jews.  The 
Jewish  was  the  one  religion  which,  on  account 
of  its  exclusiveness  and  intolerance,  was 
regarded  by  the  tolerant  pagans  with  dis- 
favour and  suspicion.  But  though  it  some- 
times came  into  collision  with  the  Roman 
authorities  and  some  ill-advised  attacks  upon 
it  were  made,  it  was  the  constant  policy  of 
the  Emperors  to  let  it  alone  and  to  protect 
the  Jews  against  the  hatred  which  their  own 
fanaticism  aroused.  But  while  the  Jewish 
religion  was  endured  so  long  as  it  was  con- 
fined to  those  who  were  born  into  it,  the  pros- 
pect of  its  dissemination  raised  a  new  ques- 
tion. Grave  misgivings  might  arise  in  the 
mind  of  a  ruler  at  seeing  a  creed  spreading 
which  was  aggressively  hostile  to  all  the  other 
creeds  of  the  world — creeds  which  lived  to- 
gether in  amity — and  had  earned  for  its  ad- 
herents the  reputation  of  being  the  enemies 
of  the  human  race.    Might  not  its  expansion 


42  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

beyond  the  Israelites  involve  ultimately  a 
danger  to  the  Empire?  For  its  spirit  was  in- 
compatible with  the  traditions  and  basis  of 
Roman  society.  The  Emperor  Domitian 
seems  to  have  seen  the  question  in  this  light, 
and  he  took  severe  measures  to  hinder  the 
proselytizing  of  Roman  citizens.  Some  of 
those  whom  he  struck  may  have  been  Chris- 
tians, but  if  he  was  aware  of  the  distinction, 
there  was  from  his  point  of  view  no  difference. 
Christianity  resembled  Judaism,  from  which 
it  sprang,  in  intolerance  and  in  hostility 
towards  Roman  society,  but  it  differed  by 
the  fact  that  it  made  many  proselytes  while 
Judaism  made  few. 

Under  Trajan  we  find  that  the  principle 
has  been  laid  down  that  to  be  a  Christian  is 
an  offence  punishable  by  death.  Hencefor- 
ward Christianity  remained  an  illegal  religion. 
But  in  practice  the  law  was  not  applied  rig- 
orously or  logically.  The  Emperors  desired, 
if  possible,  to  extirpate  Christianity  with- 
out shedding  blood.  Trajan  laid  down  that 
Christians  were  not  to  be  sought  out,  that  no 
anonymous  charges  were  to  be  noticed,  and 
that  an  informer  who  failed  to  make  good 
his  charge  should  be  liable  to  be  punished 
under  the  laws  against  calumny.  Chris- 
tians themselves  recognized  that  this  edict 
practically    protected    them.     There    were 


REASON   FREE  43 

some  executions  in  the  second  century — not 
many  that  are  well  attested — and  Christians 
courted  the  pain  and  glory  of  martyrdom. 
There  is  evidence  to  show  that  when  they 
were  arrested  their  escape  was  often  connived 
at.  In  general,  the  persecution  of  the  Chris- 
tians was  rather  provoked  by  the  populace 
than  desired  by  the  authorities.  The  popu- 
lace felt  a  horror  of  this  mysterious  Oriental 
sect  which  openly  hated  all  the  gods  and 
prayed  for  the  destruction  of  the  world. 
When  floods,  famines,  and  especially  fires 
occurred  they  were  apt  to  be  attributed  to  the 
black  magic  of  the  Christians. 

When  any  one  was  accused  of  Christianity, 
he  was  required,  as  a  means  of  testing  the 
truth  of  the  charge,  to  offer  incense  to  the 
gods  or  to  the  statues  of  deified  Emperors. 
His  compliance  at  once  exonerated  him.  The 
objection  of  the  Christians — they  and  the 
Jews  were  the  only  objectors — to  the  worship 
of  the  Emperors  was,  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Romans,  one  of  the  most  sinister  signs  that 
their  religion  was  dangerous.  The  purpose 
of  this  worship  was  to  symbolize  the  unity 
and  solidarity  of  an  Empire  which  embraced 
so  many  peoples  of  different  beliefs  and 
different  gods;  its  intention  was  political, 
to  promote  union  and  loyalty;  and  it  is  not 
surprising  that  those  who  denounced  it  should 


44  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

be  suspected  of  a  disloyal  spirit.  But  it 
must  be  noted  that  there  was  no  necessity  for 
any  citizen  to  take  part  in  this  worship.  No 
conformity  was  required  from  any  inhabit- 
ants of  the  Empire  who  were  not  serving  the 
State  as  soldiers  or  civil  functionaries.  Thus 
the  effect  was  to  debar  Christians  from  mili- 
tary and  official  careers. 

The  Apologies  for  Christianity  which  ap- 
peared at  this  period  (second  century)  might 
have  helped,  if  the  Emperors  (to  whom 
some  of  them  were  addressed)  had  read  them, 
to  confirm  the  view  that  it  was  a  political 
danger.  It  would  have  been  easy  to  read 
between  the  lines  that,  if  the  Christians  ever 
got  the  upper  hand,  they  would  not  spare  the 
cults  of  the  State.  The  contemporary  work 
of  Tatian  (A  Discourse  to  the  Greeks)  reveals 
what  the  Apologists  more  or  less  sought 
to  disguise,  invincible  hatred  towards  the 
civilization  in  which  they  lived.  Any  reader 
of  the  Christian  literature  of  the  time  could 
not  fail  to  see  that  in  a  State  where  Christians 
had  the  power  there  would  be  no  tolerance  of 
other  religious  practices.1  If  the  Emperors 
made  an  exception  to  their  tolerant  policy 
in  the  case  of  Christianity,  their  purpose  was 
to  safeguard  tolerance. 

1  For  the  evidence  of  the  Apologists  see  A.  Bouchfi- 
Leclercq,  Religious  Intolerance  and  Politics  (French,  191)) 
— a  valuable  review  of  the  whole  subject. 


REASON  FREE  45 

In  the  third  century  the  religion,  though 
still  forbidden,  was  quite  openly  tolerated; 
the  Church  organized  itself  without  conceal- 
ment; ecclesiastical  councils  assembled  with- 
out interference.  There  were  some  brief  and 
local  attempts  at  repression,  there  was  only 
one  grave  persecution  (begun  by  Decius, 
a.d.  250,  and  continued  by  Valerian).  In 
fact,  throughout  this  century,  there  were  not 
many  victims,  though  afterwards  the  Chris- 
tians invented  a  whole  mythology  of  martyr- 
doms. Many  cruelties  were  imputed  to 
Emperors  under  whom  we  know  that  the 
Church  enjoyed  perfect  peace. 

A  long  period  of  civil  confusion,  in  which 
the  Empire  seemed  to  be  tottering  to  its 
fall,  had  been  terminated  by  the  Emperor 
Diocletian,  who,  by  his  radical  administrative 
reforms,  helped  to  preserve  the  Roman  power 
in  its  integrity  for  another  century.  He 
desired  to  support  his  work  of  political 
consolidation  by  reviving  the  Roman  spirit, 
and  he  attempted  to  infuse  new  life  into  the 
official  religion.  To  this  end  he  determined 
to  suppress  the  growing  influence  of  the 
Christians,  who,  though  a  minority,  were  very 
numerous,  and  he  organized  a  persecution. 
It  was  long,  cruel  and  bloody;  it  was  the 
most  whole-hearted,  general  and  systematic 
effort  to  crush  the  forbidden  faith.     It  was  a 


46  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

failure,  the  Christians  were  now  too  numer- 
ous to  be  crushed.  After  the  abdication  of 
Diocletian,  the  Emperors  who  reigned  in 
different  parts  of  the  realm  did  not  agree  as 
to  the  expediency  of  his  policy,  and  the 
persecution  ended  by  edicts  of  toleration 
(a.d.  311  and  313).  These  documents  have 
an  interest  for  the  history  of  religious  liberty. 

The  first,  issued  in  the  eastern  provinces, 
ran  as  follows: — 

"We  were  particularly  desirous  of  reclaim- 
ing into  the  way  of  reason  and  nature  the 
deluded  Christians,  who  had  renounced  the 
religion  and  ceremonies  instituted  by  their 
fathers  and,  presumptuously  despising  the 
practice  of  antiquity,  had  invented  extrava- 
gant laws  and  opinions  according  to  the  dic- 
tates of  their  fancy,  and  had  collected  a 
various  society  from  the  different  provinces 
of  our  Empire.  The  edicts  which  we  have 
published  to  enforce  the  worship  of  the  gods, 
having  exposed  many  of  the  Christians  to 
danger  and  distress,  many  having  suffered 
death  and  many  more,  who  still  persist  in 
their  impious  folly,  being  left  destitute  of 
any  public  exercise  of  religion,  we  are  dis- 
posed to  extend  to  those  unhappy  men  the 
effects  of  our  wonted  clemency.  We  permit 
them,  therefore,  freely  to  profess  their  private 
opinions,  and  to  assemble  in  their  conven- 


REASON  FREE  47 

tides  without  fear  or  molestation,  provided 
always  that  they  preserve  a  due  respect  to 
the  established  laws  and  government."  1 

The  second,  of  which  Constantine  was  the 
author,  known  as  the  Edict  of  Milan,  was  to 
a  similar  effect,  and  based  toleration  on  the 
Emperor's  care  for  the  peace  and  happiness 
of  his  subjects  and  on  the  hope  of  appeasing 
the  Deity  whose  seat  is  in  heaven. 

The  relations  between  the  Roman  govern- 
ment and  the  Christians  raised  the  general 
question  of  persecution  and  freedom  of  con- 
science. A  State,  with  an  official  religion, 
but  perfectly  tolerant  of  all  creeds  and  cults, 
finds  that  a  society  had  arisen  in  its  midst 
which  is  uncompromisingly  hostile  to  all 
creeds  but  its  own  and  which,  if  it  had  the 
power,  would  suppress  all  but  its  own.  The 
government,  in  self-defence,  decides  to  check 
the  dissemination  of  these  subversive  ideas 
and  makes  the  profession  of  that  creed  a 
crime,  not  on  account  of  its  particular  tenets, 
but  on  account  of  the  social  consequences  of 
those  tenets.  The  members  of  the  society 
cannot  without  violating  their  consciences 
and  incurring  damnation  abandon  their  ex- 
clusive doctrine.  The  principle  of  freedom 
of  conscience  is  asserted  as  superior  to  all 
obligations  to  the  State,  and  the  State,  con- 

1  This  is  Gibbon's  translation. 


48  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

fronted  by  this  new  claim,  is  unable  to  admit 
it.     Persecution  is  the  result. 

Even  from  the  standpoint  of  an  orthodox 
and  loyal  pagan  the  persecution  of  the 
Christians  is  indefensible,  because  blood  was 
shed  uselessly.  In  other  words,  it  was  a  great 
mistake  because  it  was  unsuccessful.  For 
persecution  is  a  choice  between  two  evils. 
The  alternatives  are  violence  (which  no  rea- 
sonable defender  of  persecution  would  deny 
to  be  an  evil  in  itself)  and  the  spread  of  dan- 
gerous opinions.  The  first  is  chosen  simply 
to  avoid  the  second,  on  the  ground  that  the 
second  is  the  greater  evil.  But  if  the  perse- 
cution is  not  so  devised  and  carried  out  as  to 
accomplish  its  end,  then  you  have  two  evils 
instead  of  one,  and  nothing  can  justify  this. 
From  their  point  of  view,  the  Emperors  had 
good  reasons  for  regarding  Christianity  as 
dangerous  and  anti-social,  but  they  should 
either  have  let  it  alone  or  taken  systematic 
measures  to  destroy  it.  If  at  an  early  stage 
they  had  established  a  drastic  and  systematic 
inquisition,  they  might  possibly  have  extermi- 
nated it.  This  at  least  would  have  been 
statesmanlike.  But  they  had  no  conception 
of  extreme  measures,  and  they  did  not  under- 
stand— they  had  no  experience  to  guide  them 
— the  sort  of  problem  they  had  to  deal  with. 
They    hoped    to    succeed    by    intimidation. 


REASON  FREE  49 

Their  attempts  at  suppression  were  vacillat- 
ing, fitful,  and  ridiculously  ineffectual.  The 
later  persecutions  (of  a.d.  250  and  303)  had  no 
prospect  of  success.  It  is  particularly  to  be 
observed  that  no  effort  was  made  to  suppress 
Christian  literature. 

The  higher  problem  whether  persecution, 
even  if  it  attains  the  desired  end,  is  justifi- 
able, was  not  considered.  The  struggle  hinged 
on  antagonism  between  the  conscience  of  the 
individual  and  the  authority  and  supposed 
interests  of  the  State.  It  was  the  question 
which  had  been  raised  by  Socrates,  raised 
now  on  a  wider  platform  in  a  more  pressing 
and  formidable  shape:  what  is  to  happen 
when  obedience  to  the  law  is  inconsistent 
with  obedience  to  an  invisible  master?  Is  it 
incumbent  on  the  State  to  respect  the  con- 
science of  the  individual  at  all  costs,  or  within 
what  limits?  The  Christians  did  not  attempt 
a  solution,  the  general  problem  did  not 
interest  them.  They  claimed  the  right  of 
freedom  exclusively  for  themselves  from  a 
non-Christian  government;  and  it  is  hardly 
going  too  far  to  suspect  that  they  would  have 
applauded  the  government  if  it  had  sup- 
pressed the  Gnostic  sects  whom  they  hated 
and  calumniated.  In  any  case,  when  a 
Christian  State  was  established,  they  would 
completely  forget  the  principle  which  they 


50  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

had  invoked.  The  martyrs  died  for  con- 
science, but  not  for  liberty.  To-da}'  the 
greatest  of  the  Churches  demands  freedom 
of  conscience  in  the  modern  States  which 
she  does  not  control,  but  refuses  to  admit 
that,  where  she  had  the  power,  it  would  be 
incumbent  on  her  to  concede  it. 

If  we  review  the  history  of  classical  an- 
tiquity as  a  whole,  we  may  almost  say  that 
freedom  of  thought  was  like  the  air  men 
breathed.  It  was  taken  for  granted  and 
nobody  thought  about  it.  If  seven  or  eight 
thinkers  at  Athens  were  penalized  for  hetero- 
doxy, in  some  and  perhaps  in  most  of  these 
cases  heterodoxy  was  only  a  pretext.  They 
do  not  invalidate  the  general  facts  that  the 
advance  of  knowledge  was  not  impeded  by 
prejudice,  or  science  retarded  by  the  weight 
of  unscientific  authority.  The  educated 
Greeks  were  tolerant  because  they  were 
friends  of  reason  and  did  not  set  up  any 
authority  to  overrule  reason.  Opinions  were 
not  imposed  except  by  argument;  you  were 
not  expected  to  receive  some  "kingdom  of 
heaven"  like  a  little  child,  or  to  prostrate 
your  intellect  before  an  authority  claiming 
to  be  infallible. 

But  this  liberty  was  not  the  result  of  a 
conscious  policy  or  deliberate  conviction,  and 
therefore  it  was  precarious.     The  problems 


REASON  IN  PRISON  51 

of  freedom  of  thought,  religious  liberty,  tol- 
eration, had  not  been  forced  upon  society 
and  were  never  seriously  considered.  When 
Christianity  confronted  the  Roman  govern- 
ment, no  one  saw  that  in  the  treatment  of  a 
small,  obscure,  and,  to  pagan  thinkers,  unin- 
teresting or  repugnant  sect,  a  principle  of  the 
deepest  social  importance  was  involved.  A 
long  experience  of  the  theory  and  practice  of 
persecution  was  required  to  base  securely  the 
theory  of  freedom  of  thought.  The  lurid 
policy  of  coercion  which  the  Christian  Church 
adopted,  and  its  consequences,  would  at  last 
compel  reason  to  wrestle  with  the  problem 
and  discover  the  justification  of  intellectual 
liberty.  The  spirit  of  the  Greeks  and  Ro- 
mans, alive  in  their  works,  would,  after  a  long 
period  of  obscuration,  again  enlighten  the 
world  and  aid  in  re-establishing  the  reign  of 
reason,  which  they  had  carelessly  enjoyed 
without  assuring  its  foundations. 

CHAPTER  III 

reason  in  prison 

(the  middle  ages) 

About  ten  years  after  the  Edict  of  Tolera- 
tion, Constantine  the  Great  adopted  Christi- 
anity.   This  momentous  decision  inaugurated 


52  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

a  millennium  in  which  reason  was  enchained, 
thought  was  enslaved,  and  knowledge  made 
no  progress. 

During  the  two  centuries  in  which  they  had 
been  a  forbidden  sect  the  Christians  had 
claimed  toleration  on  the  ground  that  re- 
ligious belief  is  voluntary  and  not  a  thing 
which  can  be  enforced.  When  their  faith 
became  the  predominant  creed  and  had  the 
power  of  the  State  behind  it,  they  abandoned 
this  view.  They  embarked  on  the  hopeful 
enterprise  of  bringing  about  a  complete  uni- 
formity in  men's  opinions  on  the  mysteries 
of  the  universe,  and  began  a  more  or  less 
definite  policy  of  coercing  thought.  This 
policy  was  adopted  by  Emperors  and  Gov- 
ernments partly  on  political  grounds;  re- 
ligious divisions,  bitter  as  they  were,  seemed 
dangerous  to  the  unity  of  the  State.  But 
the  fundamental  principle  lay  in  the  doctrine 
that  salvation  is  to  be  found  exclusively  in  the 
Christian  Church.  The  profound  conviction 
that  those  who  did  not  believe  in  its  doctrines 
would  be  damned  eternally,  and  that  God 
punishes  theological  error  as  if  it  were  the 
most  heinous  of  crimes,  led  naturally  to  per- 
secution. It  was  a  duty  to  impose  on  men 
the  only  true  doctrine,  seeing  that  their  own 
eternal  interests  were  at  stake,  and  to  hinder 
errors  from  spreading.     Heretics  were  more 


REASON  IN  PRISON  53 

than  ordinary  criminals  and  the  pains  that 
man  could  inflict  on  them  were  as  nothing  to 
the  tortures  awaiting  them  in  hell.  To  rid 
the  earth  of  men  who,  however  virtuous,  were, 
through  their  religious  errors,  enemies  of  the 
Almighty,  was  a  plain  duty.  Their  virtues 
were  no  excuse.  We  must  remember  that, 
according  to  the  humane  doctrine  of  the 
Christians,  pagan,  that  is,  merely  human, 
virtues  were  vices,  and  infants  who  died  un- 
baptized  passed  the  rest  of  time  in  creeping 
on  the  floor  of  hell.  The  intolerance  arising 
from  such  views  could  not  but  differ  in  kind 
and  intensity  from  anything  that  the  world 
had  yet  witnessed. 

Besides  the  logic  of  its  doctrines,  the  char- 
acter of  its  Sacred  Book  must  also  be  held 
partly  accountable  for  the  intolerant  prin- 
ciples of  the  Christian  Church.  It  was 
unfortunate  that  the  early  Christians  had 
included  in  their  Scripture  the  Jewish  writ- 
ings which  reflect  the  ideas  of  a  low  stage  of 
civilization  and  are  full  of  savagery.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  say  how  much  harm  has 
been  done,  in  corrupting  the  morals  of  men, 
by  the  precepts  and  examples  of  inhumanity, 
violence,  and  bigotry  which  the  reverent 
reader  of  the  Old  Testament,  implicitly  be- 
lieving in  its  inspiration,  is  bound  to  approve. 
It  furnished  an  armoury  for  the  theory  of 


54  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

persecution.  The  truth  is  that  Sacred  Books 
are  an  obstacle  to  moral  and  intellectual  prog- 
ress, because  they  consecrate  the  ideas  of  a 
given  epoch,  and  its  customs,  as  divinely  ap- 
pointed. Christianity,  by  adopting  books 
of  a  long  past  age,  placed  in  the  path  of 
human  development  a  particularly  nasty 
stumbling-block.  It  may  occur  to  one  to 
wonder  how  history  might  have  been  altered 
— altered  it  surely  would  have  been — if  the 
Christians  had  cut  Jehovah  out  of  their 
programme  and,  content  with  the  New  Testa- 
ment, had  rejected  the  inspiration  of  the 
Old. 

Under  Constantine  the  Great  and  his  suc- 
cessors, edict  after  edict  fulminated  against 
the  worship  of  the  old  pagan  gods  and  against 
heretical  Christian  sects.  Julian  the  Apos- 
tate, who  in  his  brief  reign  (a.d.  361-3) 
sought  to  revive  the  old  order  of  things,  pro- 
claimed universal  toleration,  but  he  placed 
Christians  at  a  disadvantage  by  forbidding 
them  to  teach  in  schools.  This  was  only 
a  momentary  check.  Paganism  was  finally 
shattered  bj^  the  severe  laws  of  Theodosius  I 
(end  of  fourth  century).  It  lingered  on  here 
and  there  for  more  than  another  century, 
especially  at  Rome  and  Athens,  but  had  little 
importance.  The  Christians  were  more  con- 
cerned in  striving  among  themselves  than  in 


REASON  IN  PRISON  55 

crushing  the  prostrate  spirit  of  antiquity. 
The  execution  of  the  heretic  Priscillian  in 
Spain  (fourth  century)  inaugurated  the  pun- 
ishment of  heresy  by  death.  It  is  interesting 
to  see  a  non-Christian  of  this  age  teaching  the 
Christian  sects  that  they  should  suffer  one 
another.  Themistius  in  an  address  to  the 
Emperor  Valens  urged  him  to  repeal  his 
edicts  against  the  Christians  with  whom  he 
did  not  agree,  and  expounded  a  theory  of 
toleration.  "The  religious  beliefs  of  indi- 
viduals are  a  field  in  which  the  authority  of 
a  government  cannot  be  effective;  compli- 
ance can  only  lead  to  hypocritical  professions. 
Every  faith  should  be  allowed;  the  civil 
government  should  govern  orthodox  and 
heterodox  to  the  common  good.  God  him- 
self plainly  shows  that  he  wishes  various 
forms  of  worship;  there  are  many  roads  by 
which  one  can  reach  him." 

No  father  of  the  Church  has  been  more 
esteemed  or  enjoyed  higher  authority  than 
St.  Augustine  (died  a.d.  410).  He  formu- 
lated the  principle  of  persecution  for  the 
guidance  of  future  generations,  basing  it  on 
the  firm  foundation  of  Scripture — on  words 
used  by  Jesus  Christ  in  one  of  his  parables, 
"Compel  them  to  come  in."  Till  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century  the  Church  worked  hard 
to  suppress  heterodoxies.     There  was  much 


56  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

persecution,  but  it  was  not  systematic. 
There  is  reason  to  think  that  in  the  pursuit 
of  heresy  the  Church  was  mainly  guided  by 
considerations  of  its  temporal  interest,  and 
was  roused  to  severe  action  only  when  the 
spread  of  false  doctrine  threatened  to  reduce 
its  revenues  or  seemed  a  menace  to  society. 
At  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  Innocent 
III  became  Pope  and  under  him  the  Church 
of  Western  Europe  reached  the  height  of  its 
power.  He  and  his  immediate  successors 
are  responsible  for  imagining  and  beginning 
an  organized  movement  to  sweep  heretics 
out  of  Christendom.  Languedoc  in  South- 
western France  was  largely  populated  by  her- 
etics, whose  opinions  were  considered  par- 
ticularly offensive,  known  as  the  Albigeois. 
They  were  the  subjects  of  the  Count  of 
Toulouse,  and  were  an  industrious  and  re- 
spectable people.  But  the  Church  got  far  too 
little  money  out  of  this  anti-clerical  popu- 
lation, and  Innocent  called  upon  the  Count 
to  extirpate  heresy  from  his  dominion.  As 
he  would  not  obey,  the  Pope  announced  a 
Crusade  against  the  Albigeois,  and  offered  to 
all  who  would  bear  a  hand  the  usual  rewards 
granted  to  Crusaders,  including  absolution 
from  all  their  sins.  A  series  of  sanguinary 
wars  followed  in  which  the  Englishman, 
Simon  de  Montfort,  took  part.     There  were 


REASON  IN  PRISON  57 

wholesale  burnings  and  hangings  of  men, 
women  and  children.  The  resistance  of  the 
people  was  broken  down,  though  the  heresy 
was  not  eradicated,  and  the  struggle  ended  in 
1229  with  the  complete  humiliation  of  the 
Count  of  Toulouse.  The  important  point 
of  the  episode  is  this :  the  Church  introduced 
into  the  public  law  of  Europe  the  new  prin- 
ciple that  a  sovran  held  his  crown  on  the  con- 
dition that  he  should  extirpate  heresy.  If 
he  hesitated  to  persecute  at  the  command  of 
the  Pope,  he  must  be  coerced;  his  lands 
were  forfeited;  and  his  dominions  were 
thrown  open  to  be  seized  by  any  one  whom 
the  Church  could  induce  to  attack  him.  The 
Popes  thus  established  a  theocratic  system 
in  which  all  other  interests  were  to  be  sub- 
ordinated to  the  grand  duty  of  maintaining 
the  purity  of  the  Faith. 

But  in  order  to  root  out  heresy  it  was 
necessary  to  discover  it  in  its  most  secret 
retreats.  The  Albigeois  had  been  crushed, 
but  the  poison  of  their  doctrine  was  not  yet 
destroyed.  The  organized  system  of  search- 
ing out  heretics  known  as  the  Inquisition  was 
founded  by  Pope  Gregory  IX  about  a.d. 
1233,  and  fully  established  by  a  Bull  of  Inno- 
cent IV  (a.d.  1252)  which  regulated  the  ma- 
chinery of  persecution  "as  an  integral  part 
of  the  social  edifice  in  every  city  and  every 


58  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

State."  This  powerful  engine  for  the  sup- 
pression of  the  freedom  of  men's  religious 
opinions  is  unique  in  history. 

The  bishops  were  not  equal  to  the  new  talk 
undertaken  by  the  Church,  and  in  every 
ecclesiastical  province  suitable  monks  were 
selected  and  to  them  was  delegated  the 
authority  of  the  Pope  for  discovering  heretics. 
These  inquisitors  had  unlimited  authority, 
they  were  subject  to  no  supervision  and 
responsible  to  no  man.  It  would  not  have 
been  easy  to  establish  this  system  but  for 
the  fact  that  contemporary  secular  rulers 
had  inaugurated  independently  a  merciless 
legislation  against  heresy.  The  Emperor 
Frederick  II,  who  was  himself  undoubtedly 
a  freethinker,  made  laws  for  his  extensive 
dominions  in  Italy  and  Germany  (between 
1220  and  1235),  enacting  that  all  heretics 
should  be  outlawed,  that  those  who  did  not 
recant  should  be  burned,  those  who  re- 
canted should  be  imprisoned,  but  if  they 
relapsed  should  be  executed;  that  their 
property  should  be  confiscated,  their  houses 
destroyed,  and  their  children,  to  the  second 
generation,  ineligible  to  positions  of  emolu- 
ment unless  they  had  betrayed  their  father  or 
some  other  heretic. 

Frederick's  legislation  consecrated  the  stake 
as  the  proper  punishment  for  heresy.    This 


REASON  IX  PRISON  59 

cruel  form  of  death  for  that  crime  seems  to 
have  been  first  inflicted  on  heretics  by  a 
French  king  (1017).  We  must  remember 
that  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  much  later, 
crimes  of  all  kinds  were  punished  with  the 
utmost  cruelty.  In  England  in  the  reign 
of  Henry  VIII  there  is  a  case  of  prisoners 
being  boiled  to  death.  Heresy  was  the  foul- 
est of  all  crimes;  and  to  prevail  against  it 
was  to  prevail  against  the  legions  of  hell. 
The  cruel  enactments  against  heretics  were 
strongly  supported  by  the  public  opinion  of 
the  masses. 

When  the  Inquisition  was  fully  developed 
it  covered  Western  Christendom  with  a  net 
from  the  meshes  of  which  it  was  difficult  for 
a  heretic  to  escape.  The  inquisitors  in  the 
various  kingdoms  co-operated,  and  commu- 
nicated information;  there  was  "a  chain  of 
tribunals  throughout  continental  Europe." 
England  stood  outside  the  system,  but  from 
the  age  of  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V  the  govern- 
ment repressed  heresy  by  the  stake  under  a 
special  statute  (a.d.  1400;  repealed  1533;  re- 
vived under  Mary;  finally  repealed  in  1676). 

In  its  task  of  imposing  unity  of  belief  the 
Inquisition  was  most  successful  in  Spain. 
Here  towards  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury a  system  was  instituted  which  had  pecu- 
liarities of  its  own  and  was  very  jealous  of 


60  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Roman  interference.  One  of  the  achieve- 
ments of  the  Spanish  Inquisition  (which  was 
not  abolished  till  the  nineteenth  century)  was 
to  expel  the  Moriscos  or  converted  Moors, 
who  retained  many  of  their  old  Moham- 
medan opinions  and  customs.  It  is  also 
said  to  have  eradicated  Judaism  and  to  have 
preserved  the  country  from  the  zeal  of 
Protestant  missionaries.  But  it  cannot  be 
proved  that  it  deserves  the  credit  of  having 
protected  Spain  against  Protestantism,  for 
it  is  quite  possible  that  if  the  seeds  of  Protes- 
tant opinion  had  been  sown  they  would, 
in  any  case,  have  fallen  dead  on  an  uncon- 
genial soil.  Freedom  of  thought  however 
was  entirely  suppressed. 

One  of  the  most  efficacious  means  for 
hunting  down  heresy  was  the  "Edict  of 
Faith,"  which  enlisted  the  people  in  the 
service  of  the  Inquisition  and  required  every 
man  to  be  an  informer.  From  time  to  time 
a  certain  district  was  visited  and  an  edict 
issued  commanding  those  who  knew  anything 
of  any  heresy  to  come  forward  and  reveal  it, 
under  fearful  penalties  temporal  and  spiritual. 
In  consequence,  no  one  was  free  from  the 
suspicion  of  his  neighbours  or  even  of  his  own 
family.  "No  more  ingenious  device  has 
been  invented  to  subjugate  a  whole  popula- 
tion, to  paralyze  its  intellect,  and  to  reduce  it 


REASON  IN  PRISON  61 

to  blind  obedience.     It  elevated  delation  to 
the  rank  of  high  religious  duty." 

The  process  employed  in  the  trials  of  those 
accused  of  heresy  in  Spain  rejected  every 
reasonable  means  for  the  ascertainment  of 
truth.  The  prisoner  was  assumed  to  be 
guilty,  the  burden  of  proving  his  innocence 
rested  on  him;  his  judge  was  virtually  his 
prosecutor.  All  witnesses  against  him,  how- 
ever infamous,  were  admitted.  The  rules 
for  allowing  witnesses  for  the  prosecution 
were  lax;  those  for  rejecting  witnesses  for 
the  defence  were  rigid.  Jews,  Moriscos,  and 
servants  could  give  evidence  against  the 
prisoner  but  not  for  him,  and  the  same  rule 
applied  to  kinsmen  to  the  fourth  degree.  The 
principle  on  which  the  Inquisition  proceeded 
was  that  better  a  hundred  innocent  should 
suffer  than  one  guilty  person  escape.  Indul- 
gences were  granted  to  any  one  who  contrib- 
uted wood  to  the  pile.  But  the  tribunal  of 
the  Inquisition  did  not  itself  condemn  to  the 
stake,  for  the  Church  must  not  be  guilty  of 
the  shedding  of  blood.  The  ecclesiastical 
judge  pronounced  the  prisoner  to  be  a  heretic 
of  whose  conversion  there  was  no  hope,  and 
handed  him  over  ("relaxed"  him  was  the 
official  term)  to  the  secular  authority,  ask- 
ing and  charging  the  magistrate  "to  treat 
him  benignantly  and  mercifully."     But  this 


62  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

formal  plea  for  mercy  could  not  be  enter- 
tained by  the  civil  power;  it  had  no  choice 
but  to  inflict  death;  if  it  did  otherwise,  it 
was  a  promoter  of  heresy.  All  princes  and 
officials,  according  to  the  Canon  Law,  must 
punish  duly  and  promptly  heretics  handed 
over  to  them  by  the  Inquisition,  under  pain  of 
excommunication.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the 
number  of  deaths  at  the  stake  has  been  much 
over-estimated  by  popular  imagination;  but 
the  sum  of  suffering  caused  by  the  methods 
of  the  system  and  the  punishments  that  fell 
short  of  death  can  hardly  be  exaggerated. 

The  legal  processes  employed  by  the 
Church  in  these  persecutions  exercised  a 
corrupting  influence  on  the  criminal  juris- 
prudence of  the  Continent.  Lea,  the  his- 
torian of  the  Inquisition,  observes:  "Of  all 
the  curses  which  the  Inquisition  brought  in 
its  train,  this  perhaps  was  the  greatest — that, 
until  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, throughout  the  greater  part  of  Europe, 
the  inquisitorial  process,  as  developed  for  the 
destruction  of  heresy,  became  the  customary 
method  of  dealing  with  all  who  were  under 
any  accusation." 

The  Inquisitors  who,  as  Gibbon  says, 
"defended  nonsense  by  cruelties,"  are  often 
regarded  as  monsters.  It  may  be  said  for 
them  and  for  the  kings  who  did  their  will  that 


REASON  IN  PRISON  63 

they  were  not  a  bit  worse  than  the  priests  and 
monarchs  of  primitive  ages  who  sacrificed 
human  beings  to  their  deities.  The  Greek 
king,  Agamemnon,  who  immolated  his  daugh- 
ter Iphigenia  to  obtain  favourable  winds 
from  the  gods,  was  perhaps  a  most  affection- 
ate father,  and  the  seer  who  advised  him 
to  do  so  may  have  been  a  man  of  high  in- 
tegrity. They  acted  according  to  their  be- 
liefs. And  so  in  the  Middle  Ages  and  after- 
wards men  of  kindly  temper  and  the  purest 
zeal  for  morality  were  absolutely  devoid  of 
mercy  where  heresy  was  suspected.  Hatred 
of  heresy  was  a  sort  of  infectious  germ,  gen- 
erated by  the  doctrine  of  exclusive  salvation. 

It  has  been  observed  that  this  dogma  also 
injured  the  sense  of  truth.  As  man's  eternal 
fate  was  at  stake,  it  seemed  plainly  legitimate 
or  rather  imperative  to  use  any  means  to 
enforce  the  true  belief — even  falsehood  and 
imposture.  There  was  no  scruple  about  the 
invention  of  miracles  or  any  fictions  that 
were  edifying.  A  disinterested  appreciation 
of  truth  will  not  begin  to  prevail  till  the  sev- 
enteenth century. 

While  this  principle,  with  the  associated 
doctrines  of  sin,  hell,  and  the  last  judgment, 
led  to  such  consequences,  there  were  other 
doctrines  and  implications  in  Christianity 
which,  forming  a  solid  rampart  against  the 


64  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

advance  of  knowledge,  blocked  the  paths  of 
science  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  obstructed 
its  progress  till  the  latter  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century.  In  every  important  field 
of  scientific  research,  the  ground  was  occupied 
by  false  views  which  the  Church  declared  to 
be  true  on  the  infallible  authority  of  the  Bible. 
The  Jewish  account  of  Creation  and  the  Fall 
of  Man,  inextricably  bound  up  with  the 
Christian  theory  of  Redemption,  excluded 
from  free  inquiry  geology,  zoology,  and 
anthropology.  The  literal  interpretation  of 
the  Bible  involved  the  truth  that  the  sun 
revolves  round  the  earth.  The  Church  con- 
demned the  theory  of  the  antipodes.  One 
of  the  charges  against  Servetus  (who  was 
burned  in  the  sixteenth  century;  see  below, 
p.  79)  was  that  he  believed  the  statement  of  a 
Greek  geographer  that  Judea  is  a  wretched 
barren  country  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the 
Bible  describes  it  as  a  land  flowing  with  milk 
and  honey.  The  Greek  physician  Hippo- 
crates had  based  the  study  of  medicine  and 
disease  on  experience  and  methodical  re- 
search. In  the  Middle  Ages  men  relapsed 
to  the  primitive  notions  of  a  barbarous  age. 
Bodily  ailments  were  ascribed  to  occult 
agencies — the  malice  of  the  Devil  or  the 
wrath  of  God.  St.  Augustine  said  that  the 
diseases  of  Christians  were  caused  by  demons, 


REASON  IN  PRISON  65 

and  Luther  in  the  same  way  attributed  them 
to  Satan.  It  was  only  logical  that  super- 
natural remedies  should  be  sought  to  coun- 
teract the  effects  of  supernatural  causes. 
There  was  an  immense  traffic  in  relics  with 
miraculous  virtues,  and  this  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  bringing  in  a  large  revenue  to  the 
Church.  Physicians  were  often  exposed  to 
suspicions  of  sorcery  and  unbelief.  Anatomy 
was  forbidden,  partly  perhaps  on  account  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
The  opposition  of  ecclesiastics  to  inoculation 
in  the  eighteenth  century  was  a  survival  of 
the  mediaeval  view  of  disease.  Chemistry 
(alchemy)  was  considered  a  diabolical  art 
and  in  1317  was  condemned  by  the  Pope. 
The  long  imprisonment  of  Roger  Bacon 
(thirteenth  century)  who,  while  he  professed 
zeal  for  orthodoxy,  had  an  inconvenient 
instinct  for  scientific  research,  illustrates  the 
mediaeval  distrust  of  science. 

It  is  possible  that  the  knowledge  of  nature 
would  have  progressed  little,  even  if  this 
distrust  of  science  on  theological  grounds  had 
not  prevailed.  For  Greek  science  had  ceased 
to  advance  five  hundred  years  before  Chris- 
tianity became  powerful.  After  about  200 
B.C.  no  important  discoveries  were  made. 
The  explanation  of  this  decay  is  not  easy,  but 
we  may  be  sure  that  it  is  to  be  sought  in  the 


66  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

social  conditions  of  the  Greek  and  Roman 
world.  And  we  may  suspect  that  the  social 
conditions  of  the  Middle  Ages  would  have 
proved  unfavourable  to  the  scientific  spirit — 
the  disinterested  quest  of  facts — even  if  the 
controlling  beliefs  had  not  been  hostile.  We 
may  suspect  that  the  rebirth  of  science 
would  in  any  case  have  been  postponed  till 
new  social  conditions,  which  began  to  appear 
in  the  thirteenth  century  (see  next  Chapter), 
had  reached  a  certain  maturity.  Theologi- 
cal prejudice  may  have  injured  knowledge 
principally  by  its  survival  after  the  Middle 
Ages  had  passed  away.  In  other  words,  the 
harm  done  by  Christian  doctrines,  in  this 
respect,  may  lie  less  in  the  obscurantism  of 
the  dark  interval  between  ancient  and  modern 
civilization,  than  in  the  obstructions  which 
they  offered  when  science  had  revived  in 
spite  of  them  and  could  no  longer  be  crushed. 
The  firm  belief  in  witchcraft,  magic,  and 
demons  was  inherited  by  the  Middle  Ages 
from  antiquity,  but  it  became  far  more  lurid 
and  made  the  world  terrible.  Men  believed 
that  they  were  surrounded  by  fiends  watching 
for  every  opportunity  to  harm  them,  that 
pestilences,  storms,  eclipses,  and  famines 
were  the  work  of  the  Devil;  but  they  believed 
as  firmly  that  ecclesiastical  rites  were  capable 
of  coping  with  these  enemies.     Some  of  the 


REASON  IN  PRISON  67 

early  Christian  Emperors  legislated  against 
magic,  but  till  the  fourteenth  century  there 
was  no  systematic  attempt  to  root  out  witch- 
craft. The  fearful  epidemic,  known  as  the 
Black  Death,  which  devastated  Europe  in 
that  century,  seems  to  have  aggravated  the 
haunting  terror  of  the  invisible  world  of 
demons.  Trials  for  witchcraft  multiplied, 
and  for  three  hundred  years  the  discovery 
of  witchcraft  and  the  destruction  of  those 
who  were  accused  of  practising  it,  chiefly 
women,  was  a  standing  feature  of  European 
civilization.  Both  the  theory  and  the  per- 
secution were  supported  by  Holy  Scripture. 
"Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live"  was 
the  clear  injunction  of  the  highest  authority. 
Pope  Innocent  VIII  issued  a  Bull  on  the 
matter  (1484)  in  which  he  asserted  that 
plagues  and  storms  are  the  work  of  witches, 
and  the  ablest  minds  believed  in  the  reality 
of  their  devilish  powers. 

No  story  is  more  painful  than  the  persecu- 
tion of  witches,  and  nowhere  was  it  more 
atrocious  than  in  England  and  Scotland.  I 
mention  it  because  it  was  the  direct  result 
of  theological  doctrines,  and  because,  as  we 
shall  see,  it  was  rationalism  which  brought 
the  long  chapter  of  horrors  to  an  end. 

In  the  period,  then,  in  which  the  Church 
exercised  its  greatest  influence,  reason  wag 


68  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

enchained  in  the  prison  which  Christianity 
had  built  around  the  human  mind.  It  was 
not  indeed  inactive,  but  its  activity  took  the 
form  of  heresy;  or,  to  pursue  the  metaphor, 
those  who  broke  chains  were  unable  for  the 
most  part  to  scale  the  walls  of  the  prison; 
their  freedom  extended  only  so  far  as  to  arrive 
at  beliefs,  which,  like  orthodoxy  itself,  were 
based  on  Christian  mythology.  There  were 
some  exceptions  to  the  rule.  At  the  end  of 
the  twelfth  century  a  stimulus  from  another 
world  began  to  make  itself  felt.  The  philos- 
ophy of  Aristotle  became  known  to  learned 
men  in  Western  Christendom;  their  teachers 
were  Jews  and  Mohammedans.  Among  the 
Mohammedans  there  was  a  certain  amount 
of  free  thought,  provoked  by  their  knowledge 
of  ancient  Greek  speculation.  The  works  of 
the  freethinker  Averroes  (twelfth  century) 
which  were  based  on  Aristotle's  philosophy, 
propagated  a  small  wave  of  rationalism  in 
Christian  countries.  Averroes  held  the  eter- 
nity of  matter  and  denied  the  immortality 
of  the  soul;  his  general  view  may  be  described 
as  pantheism.  But  he  sought  to  avoid  diffi- 
culties with  the  orthodox  authorities  of 
Islam  by  laying  down  the  doctrine  of  double 
truth,  that  is  the  coexistence  of  two  inde- 
pendent and  contradictory  truths,  the  one 
philosophical,  and  the  other  religious.    This 


REASON  IN  PRISON  69 

did  not  save  him  from  being  banished  from 
the  court  of  the  Spanish  caliph.  In  the 
University  of  Paris  his  teaching  produced  a 
school  of  freethinkers  who  held  that  the 
Creation,  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and 
other  essential  dogmas,  might  be  true  from 
the  standpoint  of  religion  but  are  false  from 
the  standpoint  of  reason.  To  a  plain  mind 
this  seems  much  as  if  one  said  that  the 
doctrine  of  immortality  is  true  on  Sundays 
but  not  on  week-days,  or  that  the  Apostles' 
Creed  is  false  in  the  drawing-room  and  true 
in  the  kitchen.  This  dangerous  movement 
was  crushed,  and  the  saving  principle  of 
double  truth  condemned,  by  Pope  John  XXI. 
The  spread  of  Averroistic  and  similar  specula- 
tions called  forth  the  Theology  of  Thomas,  of 
Aquino  in  South  Italy  (died  1274),  a  most 
subtle  thinker,  whose  mind  had  a  natural 
turn  for  scepticism.  He  enlisted  Aristotle, 
hitherto  the  guide  of  infidelity,  on  the  side 
of  orthodoxy,  and  constructed  an  ingenious 
Christian  philosophy  which  is  still  authorita- 
tive in  the  Roman  Church.  But  Aristotle  and 
reason  are  dangerous  allies  for  faith,  and  the 
treatise  of  Thomas  is  perhaps  more  calculated 
to  unsettle  a  believing  mind  by  the  doubts 
which  it  powerfully  states  than  to  quiet  the 
scruples  of  a  doubter  by  its  solutions. 
There  must  always  have  been  some  private 


70  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

and  underground  unbelief  here  and  there, 
which  did  not  lead  to  any  serious  conse- 
quences. The  blasphemous  statement  that 
the  world  had  been  deceived  by  three  im- 
postors, Moses,  Jesus,  and  Mohammed, 
was  current  in  the  thirteenth  century.  It 
was  attributed  to  the  freethinking  Emperor 
Frederick  II  (died  1250),  who  has  been 
described  as  "the  first  modern  man."  The 
same  idea,  in  a  milder  form,  was  expressed 
in  the  story  of  the  Three  Rings,  which  is  at 
least  as  old.  A  Mohammedan  ruler,  desiring 
to  extort  money  from  a  rich  Jew,  summoned 
him  to  his  court  and  laid  a  snare  for  him. 
"My  friend,"  he  said,  "I  have  often  heard  it 
reported  that  thou  art  a  very  wise  man.  Tell 
me  therefore  which  of  the  three  religions, 
that  of  the  Jews,  that  of  the  Mohammedans, 
and  that  of  the  Christians,  thou  believest  to 
be  the  truest."  The  Jew  saw  that  a  trap  was 
laid  for  him  and  answered  as  follows:  "My 
lord,  there  was  once  a  rich  man  who  among 
his  treasures  had  a  ring  of  such  great  value 
that  he  wished  to  leave  it  as  a  perpetual  heir- 
loom to  his  successors.  So  he  made  a  will 
that  whichever  of  his  sons  should  be  found 
in  possession  of  this  ring  after  his  death  should 
be  considered  his  heir.  The  son  to  whom  he 
gave  the  ring  acted  in  the  same  way  as  his 
father,  and  so  the  ring  passed  from  hand  to 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       71 

hand.  At  last  it  came  into  the  possession  of 
a  man  who  had  three  sons  whom  he  loved 
equally.  Unable  to  make  up  his  mind  to 
which  of  them  he  should  leave  the  ring,  he 
promised  it  to  each  of  them  privately,  and 
then  in  order  to  satisfy  them  all  caused  a 
goldsmith  to  make  two  other  rings  so  closely 
resembling  the  true  ring  that  he  was  unable 
to  distinguish  them  himself.  On  his  death-bed 
he  gave  each  of  them  a  ring,  and  each  claimed 
to  be  his  heir,  but  no  one  could  prove  his  title 
because  the  rings  were  indistinguishable,  and 
the  suit  at  law  lasts  till  this  day.  It  is  even  so, 
my  lord,  with  the  three  religions,  given  by  God 
to  the  three  peoples.  They  each  think  they 
have  the  true  religion,  but  which  of  them 
really  has  it,  is  a  question,  like  that  of  the 
rings,  still  undecided."  This  sceptical  story 
became  famous  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
when  the  German  poet,  Lessing,  built  upon  it 
his  drama  Nathan  the  Sage,  which  was  intended 
to  show  the  unreasonableness  of  intolerance. 

CHAPTER  IV 

PROSPECT   OF   DELIVERANCE 

(THE  RENAISSANCE  AND   THE  reformation) 

The    intellectual    and    social    movement 
which   was   to   dispel   the   darkness   of   the 


72  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Middle  Ages  and  prepare  the  way  for  those 
who  would  ultimately  deliver  reason  from 
her  prison,  began  in  Italy  in  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  misty  veil  woven  of  credulity 
and  infantile  naivete  which  had  hung  over 
men's  souls  and  protected  them  from  under- 
standing either  themselves  or  their  relation 
to  the  world  began  to  lift.  The  individual 
began  to  feel  his  separate  individuality,  to 
be  conscious  of  his  own  value  as  a  person  apart 
from  his  race  or  country  (as  in  the  later  ages 
of  Greece  and  Rome) ;  and  the  world  around 
him  began  to  emerge  from  the  mists  of  medi- 
aeval dreams.  The  change  was  due  to  the 
political  and  social  conditions  of  the  little 
Italian  States,  of  which  some  were  republics 
and  others  governed  by  tyrants. 

To  the  human  world,  thus  unveiling  itself, 
the  individual  who  sought  to  make  it  serve 
his  purposes  required  a  guide;  and  the  guide 
was  found  in  the  ancient  literature  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  Hence  the  whole  transforma- 
tion, which  presently  extended  from  Italy  to 
Northern  Europe,  is  known  as  the  Renais- 
sance, or  rebirth  of  classical  antiquity.  But 
the  awakened  interest  in  classical  literature 
while  it  coloured  the  character  and  stimulated 
the  growth  of  the  movement,  supplying  new 
ideals  and  suggesting  new  points  of  view,  was 
only  the  form  in  which  the  change  of  spirit 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       73 

began  to  express  itself  in  the  fourteenth 
century.  The  change  might  conceivably 
have  taken  some  other  shape.  Its  true  name 
is  Humanism. 

At  the  time  men  hardly  felt  that  they  were 
passing  into  a  new  age  of  civilization,  nor  did 
the  culture  of  the  Renaissance  immediately 
produce  any  open  or  general  intellectual 
rebellion  against  orthodox  beliefs.  The  world 
was  gradually  assuming  an  aspect  decidedly 
unfriendly  to  the  teaching  of  mediaeval 
orthodoxy;  but  there  was  no  explosion  of 
hostility;  it  was  not  till  the  seventeenth 
century  that  war  between  religion  and  au- 
thority was  systematically  waged.  The 
humanists  were  not  hostile  to  theological 
authority  or  to  the  claims  of  religious  dogma; 
but  they  had  discovered  a  purely  human 
curiosity  about  this  world  and  it  absorbed 
their  interest.  They  idolized  pagan  literature 
which  abounded  in  poisonous  germs;  the 
secular  side  of  education  became  all-impor- 
tant; religion  and  theology  were  kept  in  a 
separate  compartment.  Some  speculative 
minds,  which  were  sensitive  to  the  contradic- 
tion, might  seek  to  reconcile  the  old  religion 
with  new  ideas;  but  the  general  tendency  of 
thinkers  in  the  Renaissance  period  was  to 
keep  the  two  worlds  distinct,  and  to  practise 
outward  conformity  to  the  creed  without  any 
real  intellectual  submission. 


74  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

I  may  illustrate  this  double-facedness  of 
the  Renaissance  by  Montaigne  (second  half 
of  sixteenth  century).  His  Essays  make  for 
rationalism,  but  contain  frequent  professions 
of  orthodox  Catholicism,  in  which  he  was 
perfectly  sincere.  There  is  no  attempt  to 
reconcile  the  two  points  of  view;  in  fact,  he 
takes  the  sceptical  position  that  there  is  no 
bridge  between  reason  and  religion.  The 
human  intellect  is  incapable  in  the  domain  of 
theology,  and  religion  must  be  placed  aloft, 
out  of  reach  and  beyond  the  interference  of 
reason;  to  be  humbly  accepted.  But  while 
he  humbly  accepted  it,  on  sceptical  grounds 
which  would  have  induced  him  to  accept 
Mohammadanism  if  he  had  been  born  in 
Cairo,  his  soul  was  not  in  its  dominion.  It 
was  the  philosophers  and  wise  men  of  an- 
tiquity, Cicero,  and  Seneca,  and  Plutarch, 
who  moulded  and  possessed  his  mind.  It  is  to 
them,  and  not  to  the  consolations  of  Chris- 
tian^, that  he  turns  when  he  discusses  the 
problem  of  death.  The  religious  wars  in 
France  which  he  witnessed  and  the  Massacre 
of  St.  Bartholomew's  Day  (1572)  were  calcu- 
lated to  confirm  him  in  his  scepticism.  His 
attitude  to  persecution  is  expressed  in  the  re- 
mark that  "it  is  setting  a  high  value  on  one's 
opinions  to  roast  men  on  account  of  them." 

The  logical  results  of  Montaigne's  scepti- 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       75 

cism  were  made  visible  by  his  friend  Charron, 
who  published  a  book  On  Wisdom  in  1601. 
Here  it  is  taught  that  true  morality  is  not 
founded  on  religion,  and  the  author  surveys 
the  history  of  Christianity  to  show  the  evils 
which  it  had  produced.  He  says  of  immor- 
tality that  it  is  the  most  generally  received 
doctrine,  the  most  usefully  believed,  and  the 
most  weakly  established  by  human  reasons; 
but  he  modified  this  and  some  other  passages 
in  a  second  edition.  A  contemporary  Jesuit 
placed  Charron  in  the  catalogue  of  the  most 
dangerous  and  wicked  atheists.  He  was 
really  a  deist;  but  in  those  days,  and  long 
after,  no  one  scrupled  to  call  a  non-Christian 
deist  an  atheist.  His  book  would  doubtless 
have  been  suppressed  and  he  would  have 
suffered  but  for  the  support  of  King  Henry 
IV.  It  has  a  particular  interest  because  it 
transports  us  directly  from  the  atmosphere 
of  the  Renaissance,  represented  by  Mon- 
taigne, into  the  new  age  of  more  or  less  ag- 
gressive rationalism. 

What  Humanism  did  in  the  fourteenth, 
fifteenth,  and  sixteenth  centuries,  at  first  in 
Italy,  then  in  other  countries,  was  to  create 
an  intellectual  atmosphere  in  which  the 
emancipation  of  reason  could  begin  and 
knowledge  could  resume  its  progress.  The 
period   saw  the  invention   of  printing  and 


76  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

the  discovery  of  new  parts  of  the  globe,  and 
these  things  were  to  aid  powerfully  in  the 
future  defeat  of  authority. 

But  the  triumph  of  freedom  depended  on 
other  causes  also;  it  was  not  to  be  brought 
about  by  the  intellect  alone.  The  chief 
political  facts  of  the  period  were  the  decline 
of  the  power  of  the  Pope  in  Europe,  the 
decay  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  and  the 
growth  of  strong  monarchies,  in  which  worldly 
interests  determined  and  dictated  ecclesi- 
astical policy,  and  from  which  the  modern 
State  was  to  develop.  The  success  of  the 
Reformation  was  made  possible  by  these 
conditions.  Its  victory  in  North  Germany 
was  due  to  the  secular  interest  of  the  princes, 
who  profited  by  the  confiscation  of  Church 
lands.  In  England  there  was  no  popular 
movement;  the  change  was  carried  through 
by  the  government  for  its  own  purposes. 

The  principal  cause  of  the  Reformation  was 
the  general  corruption  of  the  Church  and  the 
flagrancy  of  its  oppression.  For  a  long  time 
the  Papacy  had  had  no  higher  aim  than  to 
be  a  secular  power  exploiting  its  spiritual 
authority  for  the  purpose  of  promoting  its 
worldly  interests,  by  which  it  was  exclusively 
governed.  All  the  European  States  based 
their  diplomacy  on  this  assumption.  Since 
the  fourteenth  century  every  one  acknowl- 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       77 

edged  the  need  of  reforming  the  Church,  and 
reform  had  been  promised,  but  things  went 
from  bad  to  worse,  and  there  was  no  resource 
but  rebellion.  The  rebellion  led  by  Luther 
was  the  result  not  of  a  revolt  of  reason  against 
dogmas,  but  of  widely  spread  anti-clerical 
feeling  due  to  the  ecclesiastical  methods  of 
extorting  money,  particularly  by  the  sale  of 
Indulgences,  the  most  glaring  abuse  of  the 
time.  It  was  his  study  of  the  theory  of 
Papal  Indulgences  that  led  Luther  on  to  his 
theological  heresies. 

It  is  an  elementary  error,  but  one  which  is 
still  shared  by  many  people  who  have  read 
history  superficially,  that  the  Reformation 
established  religious  liberty  and  the  right  of 
private  judgment.  What  it  did  was  to  bring 
about  a  new  set  of  political  and  social  condi- 
tions, under  which  religious  liberty  could 
ultimately  be  secured,  and,  by  virtue  of  its 
inherent  inconsistencies,  to  lead  to  results  at 
which  its  leaders  would  have  shuddered. 
But  nothing  was  further  from  the  minds  of 
the  leading  Reformers  than  the  toleration  of 
doctrines  differing  from  their  own.  They 
replaced  one  authority  by  another.  They  set 
up  the  authority  of  the  Bible  instead  of  that 
of  the  Church,  but  it  was  the  Bible  according 
to  Luther  or  the  Bible  according  to  Calvin. 
So  far  as  the  spirit  of  intolerance  went,  there 


78  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

was  nothing  to  choose  between  the  new  and 
the  old  Churches.  The  religious  wars  were 
not  for  the  cause  of  freedom,  but  for  partic- 
ular sets  of  doctrines;  and  in  France,  if  the 
Protestants  had  been  victorious,  it  is  certain 
that  they  would  not  have  given  more  liberal 
terms  to  the  Catholics  than  the  Catholics 
gave  to  them. 

Luther  was  quite  opposed  to  liberty  of 
conscience  and  worship,  a  doctrine  which  was 
inconsistent  with  Scripture  as  he  read  it.  He 
might  protest  against  coercion  and  condemn 
the  burning  of  heretics,  when  he  was  in  fear 
that  he  and  his  party  might  be  victims,  but 
when  he  was  safe  and  in  power,  he  asserted 
his  real  view  that  it  was  the  duty  of  the  State 
to  impose  the  true  doctrine  and  exterminate 
heresy,  which  was  an  abomination,  that  un- 
limited obedience  to  their  prince  in  religious 
as  in  other  matters  was  the  duty  of  subjects, 
and  that  the  end  of  the  State  was  to  defend 
the  faith.  He  held  that  Anabaptists  should 
be  put  to  the  sword.  With  Protestants  and 
Catholics  alike  the  dogma  of  exclusive  sal- 
vation led  to  the  same  place. 

Calvin's  fame  for  intolerance  is  blackest. 
He  did  not,  like  Luther,  advocate  the  absolute 
power  of  the  civil  ruler;  he  stood  for  the 
control  of  the  State  by  the  Church — a  form  of 
government  which  is  commonly  called  theo- 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       79 

cracy;  and  he  established  a  theocracy  at 
Geneva.  Here  liberty  was  completely 
crushed;  false  doctrines  were  put  down  by 
imprisonment,  exile,  and  death.  The  pun- 
ishment of  Servetus  is  the  most  famous  exploit 
of  Calvin's  warfare  against  heresy.  The 
Spaniard  Servetus,  who  had  written  against 
the  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  was  imprisoned  at 
Lyons  (partly  through  the  machinations  of 
Calvin)  and  having  escaped  came  rashly  to 
Geneva.  He  was  tried  for  heresy  and  com- 
mitted to  the  flames  (1553),  though  Geneva 
had  no  jurisdiction  over  him.  Melanchthon, 
who  formulated  the  principles  of  persecution, 
praised  this  act  as  a  memorable  example  to 
posterity.  Posterity  however  was  one  day 
to  be  ashamed  of  that  example.  In  1903 
the  Calvinists  of  Geneva  felt  impelled  to 
erect  an  expiatory  monument,  in  which  Cal- 
vin "our  great  Reformer"  is  excused  as  guilty 
of  an  error  "which  was  that  of  his  century." 

Thus  the  Reformers,  like  the  Church  from 
which  they  parted,  cared  nothing  for  freedom, 
they  only  cared  for  ' '  truth . "  If  the  mediaeval 
ideal  was  to  purge  the  world  of  heretics,  the 
object  of  the  Protestant  was  to  exclude  all 
dissidents  from  his  own  land.  The  people  at 
large  were  to  be  driven  into  a  fold,  to  accept 
their  faith  at  the  command  of  their  sovran. 
This   was   the   principle   laid   down   in   the 


80  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

religious  peace  which  (1555)  composed  the 
struggle  between  the  Catholic  Emperor  and 
the  Protestant  German  princes.  It  was 
recognized  by  Catherine  de'  Medici  when 
she  massacred  the  French  Protestants  and 
signified  to  Queen  Elizabeth  that  she  might 
do  likewise  with  English  Catholics. 

Nor  did  the  Protestant  creeds  represent 
enlightenment.  The  Reformation  on  the 
Continent  was  as  hostile  to  enlightenment  as 
it  was  to  liberty;  and  science,  if  it  seemed 
to  contradict  the  Bible,  has  as  little  chance 
with  Luther  as  with  the  Pope.  The  Bible, 
interpreted  by  the  Protestants  or  the  Roman 
Church,  was  equally  fatal  to  witches.  In 
Germany  the  development  of  learning  re- 
ceived a  long  set-back. 

Yet  the  Reformation  involuntarily  helped 
the  cause  of  liberty.  The  result  was  contrary 
to  the  intentions  of  its  leaders,  was  indirect, 
and  long  delayed.  In  the  first  place,  the 
great  rent  in  Western  Christianity,  substi- 
tuting a  number  of  theological  authorities 
instead  of  one — several  gods,  we  may  say, 
instead  of  one  God — produced  a  weakening 
of  ecclesiastical  authority  in  general.  The 
religious  tradition  was  broken.  In  the  second 
place,  in  the  Protestant  States,  the  supreme 
ecclesiastical  power  was  vested  in  the  sovran; 
the  sovran  had  other  interests  besides  those  of 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       81 

the  Church  to  consider;  and  political  reasons 
would  compel  him  sooner  or  later  to  modify 
the  principle  of  ecclesiastical  intolerance. 
Catholic  States  in  the  same  way  were  forced 
to  depart  from  the  duty  of  not  suffering  here- 
tics. The  religious  wars  in  France  ended  in  a 
limited  toleration  of  Protestants.  The  policy 
of  Cardinal  Richelieu,  who  supported  the 
Protestant  cause  in  Germany,  illustrates  how 
secular  interests  obstructed  the  cause  of  faith. 
Again,  the  intellectual  justification  of  the 
Protestant  rebellion  against  the  Church  had 
been  the  right  of  private  judgment,  that  is, 
the  principle  of  religious  liberty.  But  the 
Reformers  had  asserted  it  only  for  them- 
selves, and  as  soon  as  they  had  framed  their 
own  articles  of  faith,  they  had  practically 
repudiated  it.  This  was  the  most  glaring 
inconsistency  in  the  Protestant  position;  and 
the  claim  which  they  had  thrust  aside  could 
not  be  permanently  suppressed.  Once  more, 
the  Protestant  doctrines  rested  on  an  insecure 
foundation  which  no  logic  could  defend,  and 
inevitably  led  from  one  untenable  position  to 
another.  If  we  are  to  believe  on  authority, 
why  should  we  prefer  the  upstart  dictation  of 
the  Lutheran  Confession  of  Augsburg  or  the 
English  Thirty-nine  Articles  to  the  venerable 
authority  of  the  Church  of  Rome?  If  we 
decide  against  Rome,  we  must  do  so  by  means 


82  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

of  reason ;  but  once  we  exercise  reason  in  the 
matter,  why  should  we  stop  where  Luther  or 
Calvin  or  any  of  the  other  rebels  stopped, 
unless  we  assume  that  one  of  them  was 
inspired?  If  we  reject  superstitions  which 
they  rejected,  there  is  nothing  except  their 
authority  to  prevent  us  from  rejecting  all  or 
some  of  the  superstitions  which  they  retained. 
Moreover,  their  Bible-worship  promoted  re- 
sults which  they  did  not  foresee.1  The 
inspired  record  on  which  the  creeds  depend 
became  an  open  book.  Public  attention  was 
directed  to  it  as  never  before,  though  it  cannot 
be  said  to  have  been  universally  read  before 
the  nineteenth  century.  Study  led  to  criti- 
cism, the  difficulties  of  the  dogma  of  inspira- 
tion were  appreciated,  and  the  Bible  was 
ultimately  to  be  submitted  to  a  remorseless 
dissection  which  has  altered  at  least  the 
quality  of  its  authority  in  the  eyes  of  intelli- 
gent believers.  This  process  of  Biblical 
criticism  has  been  conducted  mainly  in  a 
Protestant  atmosphere  and  the  new  position 
in  which  the  Bible  was  placed  by  the  Reforma- 
tion must  be  held  partly  accountable.  In 
these  ways,  Protestantism  was  adapted  to 
be  a  stepping-stone  to  rationalism,  and  thus 
served  the  cause  of  freedom. 

1  The  danger,  however,  was  felt  in  Germany,  and  in 
the  seventeenth  century  the  study  of  Scripture  was  not 
encouraged  at  German  Universities. 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       83 

That  cause  however  was  powerfully  and 
directly  promoted  by  one  sect  of  Reformers, 
who  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  others  were  blas- 
phemers and  of  whom  most  people  never 
think  when  they  talk  of  the  Reformation.  I 
mean  the  Socinians.  Of  their  far-reaching 
influence  something  will  be  said  in  the  next 
chapter. 

Another  result  of  the  Reformation  has  still 
to  be  mentioned,  its  renovating  effect  on  the 
Roman  Church,  which  had  now  to  fight  for 
its  existence.  A  new  series  of  Popes  who  were 
in  earnest  about  religion  began  with  Paul  III 
(1534)  and  reorganized  the  Papacy  and  its 
resources  for  a  struggle  of  centuries.1  The 
institution  of  the  Jesuit  order,  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Inquisition  at  Rome,  the  Council 
of  Trent,  the  censorship  of  the  Press  (Index 
of  Forbidden  Books)  were  the  expression  of 
the  new  spirit  and  the  means  to  cope  with 
the  new  situation.  The  reformed  Papacy 
was  good  fortune  for  believing  children  of 
the  Church,  but  what  here  concerns  us  is  that 
one  of  its  chief  objects  was  to  repress  freedom 
more  effectually.  Savonarola  who  preached 
right  living  at  Florence  had  been  executed 
(1498)  under  Pope  Alexander  VI  who  was  a 
notorious  profligate.     If  Savonarola  had  lived 

1  See  Barry,  Papacy  and  Modern   Times  (in  this  series), 
113  seq. 


84  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

in  the  new  era  he  might  have  been  canonized, 
but  Giordano  Bruno  was  burned. 

Giordano  Bruno  had  constructed  a  religious 
philosophy,  based  partly  upon  Epicurus, 
from  whom  he  took  the  theory  of  the  infinity 
of  the  universe.  But  Epicurean  materialism 
was  transformed  into  a  pantheistic  mysticism 
by  the  doctrine  that  God  is  the  soul  of  mat- 
ter. Accepting  the  recent  discovery  of  Co- 
pernicus, which  Catholics  and  Protestants 
alike  rejected,  that  the  earth  revolves  round 
the  sun,  Bruno  took  the  further  step  of  regard- 
ing the  fixed  stars  as  suns,  each  with  its  in- 
visible satellites.  He  sought  to  come  to  an 
understanding  with  the  Bible,  which  (he  held) 
being  intended  for  the  vulgar  had  to  accom- 
modate itself  to  their  prejudices.  Leaving 
Italy,  because  he  was  suspected  of  heresy,  he 
lived  successively  in  Switzerland,  France,  Eng- 
land, and  Germany,  and  in  1592,  induced  by  a 
false  friend  to  return  to  Venice  he  was  seized 
by  order  of  the  Inquisition.  Finally  con- 
demned in  Rome,  [he  was  burned  (1600)  in 
the  Campo  de'  Fiori,  where  a  monument  now 
stands  in  his  honour,  erected  some  years  ago, 
to  the  great  chagrin  of  the  Roman  Church. 

Much  is  made  of  the  fate  of  Bruno  because 
he  is  one  of  the  world's  famous  men.  No 
country  has  so  illustrious  a  victim  of  that  era 
to  commemorate  as  Italy,  but  in  other  lands 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       85 

blood  just  as  innocent  was  shed  for  heterodox 
opinions.  In  France  there  was  rather  more 
freedom  than  elsewhere  under  the  relatively 
tolerant  government  of  Henry  IV  and  of  the 
Cardinals  Richelieu  and  Mazarin,  till  about 
1660.  But  at  Toulouse  (1619)  Lucilio  Vanini, 
a  learned  Italian  who  like  Bruno  wandered 
about  Europe,  was  convicted  as  an  atheist 
and  blasphemer;  his  tongue  was  torn  out 
and  he  was  burned.  Protestant  England, 
under  Elizabeth  and  James  I,  did  not  lag 
behind  the  Roman  Inquisition,  but  on  ac- 
count of  the  obscurity  of  the  victims  her  zeal 
for  faith  has  been  unduly  forgotten.  Yet, 
but  for  an  accident,  she  might  have  covered 
herself  with  the  glory  of  having  done  to  death 
a  heretic  not  less  famous  than  Giordano 
Bruno.  The  poet  Marlowe  was  accused  of 
atheism,  but  while  the  prosecution  was  hang- 
ing over  him  he  was  killed  in  a  sordid  quar- 
rel in  a  tavern  (1593).  Another  dramatist 
(Kyd)  who  was  implicated  in  the  charge  was 
put  to  the  torture.  At  the  same  time  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  was  prosecuted  for  unbelief 
but  not  convicted.  Others  were  not  so  fortu- 
nate. Three  or  four  persons  were  burned 
at  Norwich  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  for  un- 
christian doctrines,  among  them  Francis 
Kett  who  had  been  a  Fellow  of  Corpus 
Christi,   Cambridge.     Under  James  I,   who 


86  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

interested  himself  personally  in  such  matters, 
Bartholomew  Legate  was  charged  with  hold- 
ing various  pestilent  opinions.  The  king 
summoned  him  to  his  presence  and  asked  him 
whether  he  did  not  pray  daily  to  Jesus  Christ. 
Legate  replied  he  had  prayed  to  Christ  in  the 
days  of  his  ignorance,  but  not  for  the  last 
seven  years.  "Away,  base  fellow,"  said 
James,  spurning  him  with  his  foot,  "it  shall 
never  be  said  that  one  stayeth  in  my  palace 
that  hath  never  prayed  to  our  Saviour  for 
seven  years  together."  Legate,  having  been 
imprisoned  for  some  time  in  Newgate,  was 
declared  an  incorrigible  heretic  and  burned 
at  Smithiield  (1611).  Just  a  month  later, 
one  Wightman  was  burned  at  Lichfield,  by 
the  Bishop  of  Coventry,  for  heterodox  doc- 
trines. It  is  possible  that  public  opinion 
was  shocked  by  these  two  burnings.  They 
were  the  last  cases  in  England  of  death  for 
unbelief.  Puritan  intolerance,  indeed,  passed 
an  ordinance  in  1648,  by  which  all  who  denied 
the  Trinity,  Christ's  divinity,  the  inspiration 
of  Scripture,  or  a  future  state,  were  liable  to 
death,  and  persons  guilty  of  other  heresies, 
to  imprisonment.  But  this  did  not  lead  to 
any  executions. 

The  Renaissance  age  saw  the  first  signs  of 
the  beginning  of  modern  science,  but  the 
mediaeval  prejudices  against  the  investiga- 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       87 

tion  of  nature  were  not  dissipated  till  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  in  Italy  they  con- 
tinued to  a  much  later  period.  The  history 
of  modern  astronomy  begins  in  1543,  with  the 
publication  of  the  work  of  Copernicus  reveal- 
ing the  truth  about  the  motions  of  the  earth. 
The  appearance  of  this  work  is  important  in 
the  history  of  free  thought,  because  it  raised 
a  clear  and  definite  issue  between  science 
and  Scripture;  and  Osiander,  who  edited  it 
(Copernicus  was  dying),  forseeing  the  outcry 
it  would  raise,  stated  untruly  in  the  preface 
that  the  earth's  motion  was  put  forward  only 
as  a  hypothesis.  The  theory  was  denounced 
by  Catholics  and  Reformers,  and  it  did  not 
convince  some  men  {e.g.  Bacon)  who  were 
not  influenced  by  theological  prejudice.  The 
observations  of  the  Italian  astronomer  Gal- 
ileo de'  Galilei  demonstrated  the  Copernican 
theory  beyond  question.  His  telescope  dis- 
covered the  moons  of  Jupiter,  and  his  observa- 
tion of  the  spots  in  the  sun  confirmed  the 
earth's  rotation.  In  the  pulpits  of  Florence, 
where  he  lived  under  the  protection  of  the 
Grand  Duke,  his  sensational  discoveries  were 
condemned.  "Men  of  Galilee,  why  stand 
ye  gazing  up  into  heaven?"  He  was  then 
denounced  to  the  Holy  Office  of  the  Inquisi- 
tion by  two  Dominican  monks.  Learning 
that  his  investigations  were  being  considered 


88  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

at  Rome,  Galileo  went  thither,  confident 
that  he  would  be  able  to  convince  the  eccle- 
siastical authorities  of  the  manifest  truth 
of  Copernicanism.  He  did  not  realize  what 
theology  was  capable  of.  In  February  1616 
the  Holy  Office  decided  that  the  Copernican 
system  was  in  itself  absurd,  and,  in  respect  of 
Scripture,  heretical.  Cardinal  Bellarmin,  by 
the  Pope's  direction,  summoned  Galileo  and 
officially  admonished  him  to  abandon  his 
opinion  and  cease  to  teach  it,  otherwise  the 
Inquisition  would  proceed  against  him .  Gali- 
leo promised  to  obey.  The  book  of  Coper- 
nicus was  placed  on  the  Index.  It  has  been 
remarked  that  Galileo's  book  on  Solar  Spots 
contains  no  mention  of  Scripture,  and  thus 
the  Holy  Office,  in  its  decree  which  related 
to  that  book,  passed  judgment  on  a  scientific, 
not  a  theological,  question. 

Galileo  was  silenced  for  a  while,  but  it  was 
impossible  for  him  to  be  mute  for  ever. 
Under  a  new  Pope  (Urban  VIII)  he  looked 
for  greater  liberty,  and  there  were  many  in 
the  Papal  circle  who  were  well  disposed  to 
him.  He  hoped  to  avoid  difficulties  by  the 
device  of  placing  the  arguments  for  the  old 
and  the  new  theories  side  by  side,  and  pre- 
tending not  to  judge  between  them.  He 
wrote  a  treatise  on  the  two  systems  (the 
Ptolemaic  and  the  Copernican)  in  the  form 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       89 

of  Dialogues,  of  which  the  preface  declares 
that  the  purpose  is  to  explain  the  pros  and 
cons  of  the  two  views.  But  the  spirit  of  the 
work  is  Copernican.  He  received  permission, 
quite  definite  as  he  thought,  from  Father 
Riccardi  (master  of  the  Sacred  Palace)  to 
print  it,  and  it  appeared  in  1632.  The  Pope 
however  disapproved  of  it,  the  book  was  ex- 
amined by  a  commission,  and  Galileo  was 
summoned  before  the  Inquisition.  He  was 
old  and  ill,  and  the  humiliations  which 
he  had  to  endure  are  a  painful  story.  He 
would  probably  have  been  more  severely 
treated,  if  one  of  the  members  of  the  tribunal 
had  not  been  a  man  of  scientific  training 
(Macolano,  a  Dominican),  who  was  able  to 
appreciate  his  ability.  Under  examination, 
Galileo  denied  that  he  had  upheld  the  mo- 
tion of  the  earth  in  the  Dialogues,  and  as- 
serted that  he  had  shown  the  reasons  of 
Copernicus  to  be  inconclusive.  This  de- 
fence was  in  accordance  with  the  statement 
in  his  preface,  but  contradicted  his  deepest 
conviction.  In  struggling  with  such  a  tri- 
bunal, it  was  the  only  line  which  a  man  who 
was  not  a  hero  could  take.  At  a  later 
session,  he  forced  himself  ignominiously 
to  confess  that  some  of  the  arguments  on  the 
Copernican  side  had  been  put  too  strongly 
and  to  declare  himself  ready  to  confute  the 


90  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

theory.  In  the  final  examination,  he  was 
threatened  with  torture.  He  said  that  before 
the  decree  of  1616  he  had  held  the  truth  of  the 
Copernican  system  to  be  arguable,  but  since 
then  he  had  held  the  Ptolemaic  to  be  true. 
Next  day,  he  publicly  abjured  the  scientific 
truth  which  he  had  demonstrated.  He  was 
allowed  to  retire  to  the  country,  on  condition 
that  he  saw  no  one.  In  the  last  months  of 
his  life  he  wrote  to  a  friend  to  this  effect: 
"The  falsity  of  the  Copernican  system  can- 
not be  doubted,  especially  by  us  Catholics. 
It  is  refuted  by  the  irrefragable  authority  of 
Scripture.  The  conjectures  of  Copernicus 
and  his  disciples  were  all  disposed  of  by  the 
one  solid  argument:  God's  omnipotence  can 
operate  in  infinitely  various  ways.  If  some- 
thing appears  to  our  observation  to  happen 
in  one  particular  way,  we  must  not  curtail 
God's  arm,  and  sustain  a  thing  in  which  we 
may  be  deceived."     The  irony  is  evident. 

Rome  did  not  permit  the  truth  about  the 
solar  system  to  be  taught  till  after  the  middle 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  Galileo's  books 
remained  on  the  Index  till  1835.  The  pro- 
hibition was  fatal  to  the  study  of  natural 
science  in  Italy. 

The  Roman  Index  reminds  us  of  the 
significance  of  the  invention  of  printing  in 
the  struggle  for  freedom  of  thought,  by  mak- 


PROSPECT  OF  DELIVERANCE       91 

ing  it  easy  to  propagate  new  ideas  far  and 
wide.  Authority  speedily  realized  the  dan- 
ger, and  took  measures  to  place  its  yoke  on 
the  new  contrivance,  which  promised  to 
be  such  a  powerful  ally  of  reason.  Pope 
Alexander  VI  inaugurated  censorship  of  the 
Press  by  his  Bull  against  unlicensed  printing 
(1501).  In  France  King  Henry  II  made 
printing  without  official  permission  punishable 
by  death.  In  Germany,  censorship  was  intro- 
duced in  15-29.  In  England,  under  Elizabeth, 
books  could  not  be  printed  without  a  license, 
and  printing  presses  were  not  allowed  except 
in  London,  Oxford,  and  Cambridge;  the  regu- 
lation of  the  Press  was  under  the  authority 
of  the  Star  Chamber.  Nowhere  did  the  Press 
become  really  free  till  the  nineteenth  century. 
While  the  Reformation  and  the  renovated 
Roman  Church  meant  a  reaction  against  the 
Renaissance,  the  vital  changes  which  the 
Renaissance  signified — individualism,  a  new 
intellectual  attitude  to  the  world,  the  cultiva- 
tion of  secular  knowledge — were  permanent 
and  destined  to  lead,  amid  the  competing 
intolerances  of  Catholic  and  Protestant 
powers,  to  the  goal  of  liberty.  We  shall  see 
how  reason  and  the  growth  of  knowledge 
undermined  the  bases  of  theological  au- 
thority. At  each  step  in  this  process,  in 
which    philosophical    speculation,    historical 


92  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

criticism,  natural  science  have  all  taken  part, 
the  opposition  between  reason  and  faith 
deepened;  doubt,  clear  or  vague,  increased; 
and  secularism,  derived  from  the  Humanists, 
and  always  implying  scepticism,  whether  la- 
tent or  conscious,  substituted  an  interest  in 
the  fortunes  of  the  human  race  upon  earth  for 
the  interest  in  a  future  world.  And  along 
with  this  steady  intellectual  advance,  tolera- 
tion gained  ground  and  freedom  won  more 
champions.  In  the  meantime  the  force  of 
political  circumstances  was  compelling  gov- 
ernments to  mitigate  their  maintenance  of 
one  religious  creed  by  measures  of  relief  to 
other  Christian  sects,  and  the  principle  of 
exclusiveness  was  broken  down  for  reasons 
of  worldly  expediency.  Religious  liberty  was 
an  important  step  towards  complete  freedom 
of  opinion. 

CHAPTER  V 

RELIGIOUS   TOLERATION 

In  the  third  century  B.C.  the  Indian  king 
Asoka,  a  man  of  religious  zeal  but  of  tolerant 
spirit,  confronted  by  the  struggle  between  two 
hostile  religions  (Brahmanism  and  Bud- 
dhism), decided  that  both  should  be  equally 
privileged  and  honoured  in  his  dominions. 
His  ordinances  on  the  matter  are  memorable 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  93 

as  the  earliest  existing  Edicts  of  toleration. 
In  Europe,  as  we  saw,  the  principle  of  tolera- 
tion was  for  the  first  time  definitely  expressed 
in  the  Roman  Imperial  Edicts  which  termi- 
nated the  persecution  of  the  Christians. 

The  religious  strife  of  the  sixteenth  century 
raised  the  question  in  its  modern  form,  and 
for  many  generations  it  was  one  of  the  chief 
problems  of  statesmen  and  the  subject  of 
endless  controversial  pamphlets.  Toleration 
means  incomplete  religious  liberty,  and  there 
are  many  degrees  of  it.  It  might  be  granted 
to  certain  Christian  sects;  it  might  be  granted 
to  Christian  sects,  but  these  alone;  it  might 
be  granted  to  all  religions,  but  not  to  free- 
thinkers; or  to  deists,  but  not  to  atheists.  It 
might  mean  the  concession  of  some  civil 
rights,  but  not  of  others;  it  might  mean  the 
exclusion  of  those  who  are  tolerated  from 
public  offices  or  from  certain  professions. 
The  religious  liberty  now  enjoyed  in  Western 
lands  has  been  gained  through  various  stages 
of  toleration. 

We  owe  the  modern  principle  of  toleration 
to  the  Italian  group  of  Reformers,  who  re- 
jected the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  and  were 
the  fathers  of  Unitarianism.  The  Reforma- 
tion movement  had  spread  to  Italy,  but  Rome 
was  successful  in  suppressing  it,  and  many 
heretics  fled  to  Switzerland.     The  anti-Trini- 


94  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

tarian  group  were  forced  by  the  intoler- 
ance of  Calvin  to  flee  to  Transylvania  and 
Poland  where  they  propagated  their  doc- 
trines. The  Unitarian  creed  was  moulded 
by  Fausto  Sozzini,  generally  known  as 
Socinus,  and  in  the  catechism  of  his  sect 
(1574)  persecution  is  condemned.  This  re- 
pudiation of  the  use  of  force  in  the  interest  of 
religion  is  a  consequence  of  the  Socinian  doc- 
trines. For,  unlike  Luther  and  Calvin,  the 
Socinians  conceded  such  a  wide  room  to  in- 
dividual judgment  in  the  interpretation  of 
Scripture  that  to  impose  Socinianism  would 
have  been  inconsistent  with  its  principles. 
In  other  words,  there  was  a  strong  rational- 
istic element  which  was  lacking  in  the  Trini- 
tarian creeds. 

It  was  under  the  influence  of  the  Socinian 
spirit  that  Castellion  of  Savoy  sounded  the 
trumpet  of  toleration  in  a  pamphlet  denounc- 
ing the  burning  of  Servetus,  whereby  he 
earned  the  malignant  hatred  of  Calvin.  He 
maintained  the  innocence  of  error  and  ridi- 
culed the  importance  which  the  Churches 
laid  on  obscure  questions  such  as  predesti- 
nation and  the  Trinity.  "To  discuss  the  dif- 
ference between  the  Law  and  the  Gospel, 
gratuitous  remission  of  sins  or  imputed  right- 
eousness, is  as  if  a  man  were  to  discuss 
whether  a  prince  was  to  come  on  horseback, 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  95 

or  in  a  chariot,  or  dressed  in  white  or  in  red."  l 
Religion  is  a  curse  if  persecution  is  a  neces- 
sary part  of  it. 

For  a  long  time  the  Socinians  and  those 
who  came  under  their  influence  when,  driven 
from  Poland,  they  passed  into  Germany  and 
Holland,  were  the  only  sects  which  advocated 
toleration.  It  was  adopted  from  them  by  the 
Anabaptists  and  by  the  Arminian  section  of 
the  Reformed  Church  of  Holland.  And  in 
Holland,  the  founder  of  the  English  Congrega- 
tionalists,  who  (under  the  name  of  Independ- 
ents) played  such  an  important  part  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  Civil  War  and  the  Commonwealth, 
learned  the  principle  of  liberty  of  conscience. 

Socinus  thought  that  this  principle  could 
be  realized  without  abolishing  the  State 
Church.  He  contemplated  a  close  union 
between  the  State  and  the  prevailing  Church, 
combined  with  complete  toleration  for  other 
sects.  It  is  under  this  system  (which  has 
been  called  jurisdictional)  that  religious  lib- 
erty has  been  realized  in  European  States. 
But  there  is  another  and  simpler  method,  that 
of  separating  Church  from  State  and  placing 
all  religions  on  an  equality.  This  was  the 
solution  which  the  Anabaptists  would  have 
preferred.  They  detested  the  State;  and 
the   doctrine   of   religious    liberty    was   not 

1  Translated  by  Lecky. 


96  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

precious  to  them.  Their  ideal  system  would 
have  been  an  Anabaptist  theocracy;  separa- 
tion was  the  second  best. 

In  Europe,  public  opinion  was  not  ripe  for 
separation,  inasmuch  as  the  most  powerful 
religious  bodies  were  alike  in  regarding  tol- 
eration as  wicked  indifference.  But  it  was 
introduced  in  a  small  corner  of  the  new  world 
beyond  the  Atlantic  in  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Puritans  who  fled  from  the 
intolerance  of  the  English  Church  and  State 
and  founded  colonies  in  New  England,  were 
themselves  equally  intolerant,  not  only  to 
Anglicans  and  Catholics,  but  to  Baptists  and 
Quakers.  They  set  up  theocratical  govern- 
ments from  which  all  who  did  not  belong  to 
their  own  sect  were  excluded.  Roger  Will- 
iams had  imbibed  from  the  Dutch  Arminians 
the  idea  of  separation  of  Church  from  State. 
On  account  of  this  heresy  he  was  driven 
from  Massachusetts,  and  he  founded  Provi- 
dence to  be  a  refuge  for  those  whom  the  Puri- 
tan colonists  persecuted.  Here  he  set  up  a 
democratic  constitution  in  which  the  magis- 
trates had  power  only  in  civil  matters  and 
could  not  interfere  with  religion.  Other 
towns  were  presently  founded  in  Rhode 
Island,  and  a  charter  of  Charles  II  (1663) 
confirmed  the  constitution,  which  secured  to 
all  citizens  professing  Christianity,  of  what- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  97 

ever  form,  the  full  enjoyment  of  political 
rights.  Non-Christians  were  tolerated,  but 
were  not  admitted  to  the  political  rights  of 
Christians.  So  far,  the  new  State  fell  short 
of  perfect  liberty.  But  the  fact  that  Jews 
were  soon  admitted,  notwithstanding,  to  full 
citizenship  shows  how  free  the  atmosphere 
was.  To  Roger  Williams  belongs  the  glory 
of  having  founded  the  first  modern  State 
which  was  really  tolerant  and  was  based  on 
the  principle  of  taking  the  control  of  religious 
matters  entirely  out  of  the  hands  of  the  civil 
government. 

Toleration  was  also  established  in  the 
Roman  Catholic  colony  of  Maryland,  but  in 
a  different  way.  Through  the  influence  of 
Lord  Baltimore  an  Act  of  Toleration  was 
passed  in  1649,  notable  as  the  first  decree, 
voted  by  a  legal  assembly,  granting  complete 
freedom  to  all  Christians.  No  one  professing 
faith  in  Christ  was  to  be  molested  in  regard 
to  his'religion.  But  the  law  was  heavy  on  all 
outside  this  pale.  Any  one  who  blasphemed 
God  or  attacked  the  Trinity  or  any  member 
of  the  Trinity  was  threatened  by  the  penalty 
of  death.  The  tolerance  of  Maryland  at- 
tracted so  many  Protestant  settlers  from 
Virginia  that  the  Protestants  became  a 
majority,  and  as  soon  as  they  won  political 
preponderance,  they  introduced  an  Act  (1654) 


98  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

excluding  Papists  and  Prelatists  from  tolero- 
tion.  The  rule  of  theBaltimores  was  restored 
after  1660,  and  the  old  religious  freedom  was 
revived,  but  with  the  accession  of  William 
III  the  Protestants  again  came  into  power  and 
the  toleration  which  the  Catholics  had  insti- 
tuted in  Maryland  came  to  an  end. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  both  these  cases 
freedom  was  incomplete;  but  it  was  much 
larger  and  more  fundamental  in  Rhode 
Island,  where  it  had  been  ultimately  derived 
from  the  doctrine  of  Socinus.1  When  the 
colonies  became  independent  of  England  the 
Federal  Constitution  which  they  set  up  was 
absolutely  secular,  but  it  was  left  to  each 
member  of  the  Union  to  adopt  Separation  or 
not  (1789).  If  separation  has  become  the 
rule  in  the  American  States,  it  may  be  largely 
due  to  the  fact  that  on  any  other  system  the 
governments  would  have  found  it  difficult 
to  impose  mutual  tolerance  on  the  sects.  It 
must  be  added  that  in  Maryland  and  a  few 
southern  States  atheists  still  suffer  from  some 
political  disabilities. 

In  England,  the  experiment  of  Separation 
would  have  been  tried  under  the  Common- 
wealth, if  the  Independents  had  had  their 
way.     This  policy  was  overruled  by  Crom- 

1  Complete    toleration  was  established    by    Penn    in    the 
Quaker  Colony  of  Pennsylvania  in  1682. 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  99 

well.  The  new  national  Church  included 
Presbyterians,  Independents,  and  Baptists, 
but  liberty  of  worship  was  granted  to  all 
Christian  sects,  except  Roman  Catholics  and 
Anglicans.  If  the  parliament  had  had  the 
power,  this  toleration  would  have  been  a  mere 
name.  The  Presbyterians  regarded  tolera- 
tion as  a  work  of  the  Devil,  and  would  have 
persecuted  the  Independents  if  they  could. 
But  under  Cromwell's  autocratic  rule  even 
the  Anglicans  lived  in  peace,  and  toleration 
was  extended  to  the  Jews.  In  these  days, 
voices  were  raised  from  various  quarters 
advocating  toleration  on  general  grounds.1 
The  most  illustrious  advocate  was  Milton, 
the  poet,  who  was  in  favour  of  the  severance 
of  Church  from  State. 

In  Milton's  Areopagitica:  a  speech  for  the 
liberty  of  unlicensed  printing  (1644),  the 
freedom  of  the  Press  is  eloquently  sustained 
by  arguments  which  are  valid  for  freedom  of 
thought  in  general.  It  is  shown  that  the 
censorship  will  conduce  "to  the  discourage- 
ment of  all  learning  and  the  stop  of  truth, 
not  only  by  disexercising  and  blunting  our 
abilities  in  what  we  know  already,  but  by 
hindering  and  cropping  the  discovery  that 
might  be  yet  further  made,  both  in  religious 

1  Especially  Chillingworth's  Religion  of  Protestants  (1637), 
and  Jeremy  Taylor's  Liberty  of  Prophesying  (1646). 


100  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

and  civil  wisdom."  For  knowledge  is  ad- 
vanced through  the  utterance  of  new  opin- 
ions, and  truth  is  discovered  by  free  dis- 
cussion. If  the  waters  of  truth  "flow  not 
in  a  perpetual  progression  they  sicken  into  a 
muddy  pool  of  conformity  and  tradition." 
Books  which  are  authorized  by  the  licensers 
are  apt  to  be,  as  Bacon  said,  "but  the  lan- 
guage of  the  times,"  and  do  not  contribute 
to  progress.  The  examples  of  the  countries 
where  the  censorship  is  severe  do  not  suggest 
that  it  is  useful  for  morals:  "look  into  Italy 
and  Spain,  whether  those  places  be  one 
scruple  the  better,  the  honester,  the  wiser, 
the  chaster,  since  all  the  inquisitional  rigour 
that  hath  been  executed  upon  books."  Spain 
indeed  could  reply,  "We  are,  what  is  more  im- 
portant, more  orthodox."  It  is  interesting  to 
notice  that  Milton  places  freedom  of  thought 
above  civil  liberty:  "Give  me  the  liberty  to 
know,  to  utter,  and  to  argue  freely  according 
to  conscience,  above  all  other  liberties." 

With  the  restoration  of  the  Monarchy  and 
the  Anglican  Church,  religious  liberty  was 
extinguished  by  a  series  of  laws  against 
Dissenters.  To  the  Revolution  we  owe  the 
Act  of  Toleration  (1689)  from  which  the 
religious  freedom  which  England  enjoys  at 
present  is  derived.  It  granted  freedom  of 
worship  to  Presbyterians,  Congregationalists, 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  101 

Baptists  and  Quakers,  but  only  to  these; 
Catholics  and  Unitarians  were  expressly 
excepted  and  the  repressive  legislation  of 
Charles  II  remained  in  force  against  them. 
It  was  a  characteristically  English  measure, 
logically  inconsistent  and  absurd,  a  mixture 
of  tolerance  and  intolerance,  but  suitable  to 
the  circumstances  and  the  state  of  public 
opinion  at  the  time. 

In  the  same  year  John  Locke's  famous 
(first)  Letter  concerning  Toleration  appeared 
in  Latin.  Three  subsequent  letters  devel- 
oped and  illustrated  his  thesis.  The  main 
argument  is  based  on  the  principle  that 
the  business  of  civil  government  is  quite 
distinct  from  that  of  religion,  that  the  State 
is  a  society  constituted  only  for  preserving 
and  promoting  the  civil  interests  of  its  mem- 
bers— civil  interests  meaning  life,  liberty, 
health,  and  the  possession  of  property.  The 
care  of  souls  is  not  committed  to  magistrates 
more  than  to  other  men.  For  the  magistrate 
can  only  use  outward  force;  but  true  religion 
means  the  inward  persuasion  of  the  mind,  and 
the  mind  is  so  made  that  force  cannot  compel 
it  to  believe.  So  too  it  is  absurd  for  a  State 
to  make  laws  to  enforce  a  religion,  for  laws  are 
useless  without  penalties,  and  penalties  are 
impertinent  because  they  cannot  convince. 

Moreover,  even  if  penalties  could  change 


102  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

men's  beliefs,  this  would  not  conduce  to  the 
salvation  of  souls.  Would  more  men  be 
saved  if  all  blindly  resigned  themselves  to  the 
will  of  their  rulers  and  accepted  the  religion 
of  their  country?  For  as  the  princes  of  the 
world  are  divided  in  religion,  one  country 
alone  would  be  in  the  right,  and  all  the  rest 
of  the  world  would  have  to  follow  their  princes 
to  destruction;  "and  that  which  heightens 
the  absurdity,  and  very  ill  suits  the  notion  of 
a  deity,  men  would  owe  their  eternal  happi- 
ness or  their  eternal  misery  to  the  places 
of  their  nativity."  This  is  a  principle  on 
which  Locke  repeatedly  insists.  If  a  State 
is  justified  in  imposing  a  creed,  it  follows 
that  in  all  the  lands,  except  the  one  or  few 
in  which  the  true  faith  prevails,  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  subjects  to  embrace  a  false  re- 
ligion. If  Protestantism  is  promoted  in 
England,  Popery  by  the  same  rule  will  be 
promoted  in  France.  "What  is  true  and 
good  in  England  will  be  true  and  good  at 
Rome  too,  in  China,  or  Geneva."  Tolera- 
tion is  the  principle  which  gives  to  the  true 
faith  the  best  chance  of  prevailing. 

Locke  would  concede  full  liberty  to  idol- 
aters, by  whom  he  means  the  Indians  of 
North  America,  and  he  makes  some  scathing 
remarks  on  the  ecclesiastical  zeal  which 
forced  these  "innocent  pagans"  to  forsake 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  103 

their  ancient  religion.  But  his  toleration, 
though  it  extends  beyond  the  Christian  pale, 
is  not  complete.  He  excepts  in  the  first 
place  Roman  Catholics,  not  on  account  of 
their  theological  dogmas  but  because  they 
"teach  that  faith  is  not  to  be  kept  with 
heretics,"  that  "kings  excommunicated  for- 
feit their  crowns  and  kingdoms,"  and  because 
they  deliver  themselves  up  to  the  protection 
and  service  of  a  foreign  prince — the  Pope. 
In  other  words,  they  are  politically  dan- 
gerous. His  other  exception  is  atheists. 
"Those  are  not  all  to  be  tolerated  who  deny 
the  being  of  God.  Promises,  covenants  and 
oaths,  which  are  the  bonds  of  human  society, 
can  have  no  hold  upon  an  atheist.  The  tak- 
ing away  of  God,  though  but  even  in  thought, 
dissolves  all.  Besides  also,  those  that  by 
their  atheism  undermine  and  destroy  all  re- 
ligion, can  have  no  pretence  of  religion  to 
challenge  the  privilege  of  a  Toleration." 

Thus  Locke  is  not  free  from  the  prejudices 
of  his  time.  These  exceptions  contradict 
his  own  principle  that  "it  is  absurd  that 
things  should  be  enjoined  by  laws  which  are 
not  in  men's  power  to  perform.  And  to  be- 
lieve this  or  that  to  be  true  does  not  depend 
upon  our  will."  This  applies  to  Roman 
Catholics  as  to  Protestants,  to  atheists  as  to 
deists.     Locke,    however,    perhaps    thought 


104  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

that  the  speculative  opinion  of  atheism,  which 
was  uncommon  in  his  day,  does  depend  on 
the  will.  He  would  have  excluded  from  his 
State  his  great  contemporary  Spinoza. 

But  in  spite  of  its  limitations  Locke's 
Toleration  is  a  work  of  the  highest  value,  and 
its  argument  takes  us  further  than  its  author 
went.  It  asserts  unrestrictedly  the  secular 
principle,  and  its  logical  issue  is  Disestab- 
lishment. A  Church  is  merely  "a  free  and 
voluntary  society."  I  may  notice  the  remark 
that  if  infidels  were  to  be  converted  by  force, 
it  was  easier  for  God  to  do  it  "with  armies 
of  heavenly  legions  than  for  any  son  of  the 
Church,  how  potent  soever,  with  all  his 
dragoons."  This  is  a  polite  way  of  stating 
a  maxim  analogous  to  that  of  the  Emperor 
Tiberius  (above,  p.  41).  If  false  beliefs  are 
an  offence  to  God,  it  is,  really,  his  affair. 

The  toleration  of  Nonconformists  was  far 
from  pleasing  extreme  Anglicans,  and  the 
influence  of  this  party  at  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  menaced  the  liberty  of 
Dissenters.  The  situation  provoked  Defoe, 
who  was  a  zealous  Nonconformist,  to  write  his 
pamphlet,  The  Shortest  Way  with  the  Dis- 
senters (1702),  an  ironical  attack  upon  the 
principle  of  toleration.  It  pretends  to  show 
that  the  Dissenters  are  at  heart  incorrigible 
rebels,  that  a  gentle  policy  is  useless,  and  sug- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  105 

gests  that  all  preachers  at  conventicles  should 
be  hanged  and  all  persons  found  attending  such 
meetings  should  be  banished.  This  exceed- 
ingly amusing  but  terribly  earnest  caricature 
of  the  sentiments  of  the  High  Anglican  party 
at  first  deceived  and  alarmed  the  Dissenters 
themselves.  But  the  High  Churchmen  were 
furious.  Defoe  was  fined,  exposed  in  the  pil- 
lory three  times,  and  sent  to  Newgate  prison. 

But  the  Tory  reaction  was  only  temporary. 
During  the  eighteenth  century  a  relatively 
tolerant  spirit  prevailed  among  the  Christian 
sects  and  new  sects  were  founded.  The 
official  Church  became  less  fanatical;  many 
of  its  leading  divines  were  influenced  by 
rationalistic  thought.  If  it  had  not  been 
for  the  opposition  of  King  George  III,  the 
Catholics  might  have  been  freed  from  their 
disabilities  before  the  end  of  the  century. 
This  measure,  eloquently  advocated  by  Burke 
and  desired  by  Pitt,  was  not  carried  till  1829, 
and  then  under  the  threat  of  a  revolution  in 
Ireland.  In  the  meantime  legal  toleration  had 
been  extended  to  the  Unitarians  in  1813,  but 
they  were  not  relieved  from  all  disabilities  till 
the  forties.  Jews  were  not  admitted  to  the 
full  rights  of  citizenship  till  1858. 

The  achievement  of  religious  liberty  in 
England  in  the  nineteenth  century  has  been 
mainly  the  work  of  Liberals.     The  Liberal 


106  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

party  has  been  moving  towards  the  ultimate 
goal  of  complete  secularization  and  the  sepa- 
ration of  the  Church  from  the  State — 
the  logical  results  of  Locke's  theory  of  civil 
government.  The  Disestablishment  of  the 
Church  in  Ireland  in  1869  partly  realized  this 
ideal,  and  now  more  than  forty  years  later 
the  Liberal  party  is  seeking  to  apply  the 
principle  to  Wales.  It  is  highly  characteris- 
tic of  English  politics  and  English  psychology 
that  the  change  should  be  carried  out  in  this 
piecemeal  fashion.  In  the  other  countries  of 
the  British  Empire  the  system  of  Separation 
prevails;  there  is  no  connection  between  the 
State  and  any  sect;  no  Church  is  anything 
more  than  a  voluntary  society.  But  secu- 
larization has  advanced  under  the  State 
Church  system.  It  is  enough  to  mention  the 
Education  Act  of  1870  and  the  abolition  of 
religious  tests  at  Universities  (1871).  Other 
gains  for  freedom  will  be  noticed  when  I 
come  to  speak  in  another  chapter  of  the 
progress  of  rationalism. 

If  we  compare  the  religious  situation  in 
France  in  the  seventeenth  with  that  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  it  seems  to  be  sharply 
contrasted  with  the  development  in  England. 
In  England  there  was  a  great  advance  to- 
wards religious  liberty,  in  France  there  was  a 
falling  away.     Until  1676  the  French  Protes- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  107 

tants  (Huguenots)  were  tolerated;  for  the 
next  hundred  years  they  were  outlaws.  But 
the  toleration,  which  their  charter  (the  Edict 
of  Nantes,  1598)  secured  them,  was  of  a 
limited  kind.  They  were  excluded,  for  in- 
stance, from  the  army;  they  were  excluded 
from  Paris  and  other  cities  and  districts.  And 
the  liberty  which  they  enjoyed  was  confined 
to  them;  it  was  not  granted  to  any  other 
sect.  The  charter  was  faithfully  maintained 
by  the  two  great  Cardinals  (Richelieu  and 
Mazarin)  who  governed  France  under  Louis 
XIII  and  Louis  XIV,  but  when  the  latter  as- 
sumed the  active  power  in  1661  he  began  a 
series  of  laws  against  the  Protestants  which  cul- 
minated in  the  revoking  of  the  charter  (1676) 
and  the  beginning  of  a  Protestant  persecution. 
The  French  clergy  justified  this  policy  by 
the  notorious  text  "Compel  them  to  come 
in,"  and  appealed  to  St.  Augustine.  Their 
arguments  evoked  a  defence  of  toleration  by 
Bayle,  a  French  Protestant  who  had  taken 
refuge  in  Holland.  It  was  entitled  a  Philo- 
sophical Commentary  on  the  text  "Compel 
them  to  come  in"  (1686)  and  in  importance 
stands  beside  Locke's  work  which  was  being 
composed  at  the  same  time.  Many  of  the 
arguments  urged  by  the  two  writers  are 
identical.  They  agreed,  and  for  the  same 
reasons,  in  excluding  Roman  Catholics.    The 


108         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

most  characteristic  thing  in  Bayle's  treatise  is 
his  sceptical  argument  that,  even  if  it  were  a 
right  principle  to  suppress  error  by  force,  no 
truth  is  certain  enough  to  justify  us  in  applying 
the  theory.  We  shall  see  (next  chapter)  this 
eminent  scholar's  contribution  to  rationalism. 

Though  there  was  an  immense  exodus  of 
Protestants  from  France,  Louis  did  not  suc- 
ceed in  his  design  of  extirpating  heresy  from 
his  lands.  In  the  eighteenth  century,  under 
Louis  XV,  the  presence  of  Protestants  was 
tolerated  though  they  were  outlaws;  their 
marriages  were  not  recognized  as  legal,  and 
they  were  liable  at  any  moment  to  persecu- 
tion. About  the  middle  of  the  century  a 
literary  agitation  began,  conducted  mainly 
by  rationalists,  but  finally  supported  by 
enlightened  Catholics,  to  relieve  the  affliction 
of  the  oppressed  sect.  It  resulted  at  last  in 
an  Edict  of  Toleration  (1787),  which  made  the 
position  of  the  Protestants  endurable,  though 
it  excluded  them  from  certain  careers. 

The  most  energetic  and  forceful  leader  in 
the  campaign  against  intolerance  was  Vol- 
taire (see  next  chapter),  and  his  exposure  of 
some  glaring  cases  of  unjust  persecution  did 
more  than  general  arguments  to  achieve  the 
object.  The  most  infamous  case  was  that  of 
Jean  Calas,  a  Protestant  merchant  of  Tou- 
louse, whose  son  committed  suicide.    A  report 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  109 

was  set  abroad  that  the  young  man  had  de- 
cided to  join  the  Catholic  Church,  and  that 
his  father,  mother,  and  brother,  filled  with 
Protestant  bigotry,  killed  him,  with  the  help 
of  a  friend.  They  were  all  put  in  irons,  tried, 
and  condemned,  though  there  were  no  argu- 
ments for  their  guilt,  except  the  conjecture  of 
bigotry.  Jean  Calas  was  broken  on  the 
wheel,  his  son  and  daughter  cast  into  convents, 
his  wife  left  to  starve.  Through  the  activity  of 
Voltaire,  then  living  near  Geneva,  the  widow 
was  induced  to  go  to  Paris,  where  she  was 
kindly  received,  and  assisted  by  eminent 
lawyers;  a  judicial  inquiry  was  made;  the 
Toulouse  sentence  was  reversed  and  the  King 
granted  pensions  to  those  who  had  suffered. 
This  scandal  could  only  have  happened  in  the 
provinces,  according  to  Voltaire:  "at  Paris," 
he  says,  "fanaticism,  powerful  though  it  may 
be,  is  always  controlled  by  reason." 

The  case  of  Sirven,  though  it  did  not  end 
tragically,  was  similar,  and  the  government 
of  Toulouse  was  again  responsible.  He  was 
accused  of  having  drowned  his  daughter  in  a 
well  to  hinder  her  from  becoming  a  Catholic, 
and  was,  with  his  wife,  sentenced  to  death. 
Fortunately  he  and  his  family  had  escaped  to 
Switzerland,  where  they  persuaded  Voltaire 
of  their  innocence.  To  get  the  sentence 
reversed  was  the  work  of  nine  years,  and  this 


110  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

time  it  was  reversed  at  Toulouse.  When 
Voltaire  visited  Paris  in  1778  he  was  ac- 
claimed by  crowds  as  the  "defender  of  Calas 
and  the  Sirvens."  His  disinterested  practi- 
cal activity  against  persecution  was  of  far 
more  value  than  the  treatise  on  Toleration 
which  he  wrote  in  connexion  with  the  Calas 
episode.  It  is  a  poor  work  compared  with 
those  of  Locke  and  Bayle.  The  tolerance 
which  he  advocates  is  of  a  limited  kind;  he 
would  confine  public  offices  and  dignities  to 
those  who  belong  to  the  State  religion. 

But  if  Voltaire's  system  of  toleration  is 
limited,  it  is  wide  compared  with  the  religious 
establishment  advocated  by  his  contempo- 
rary, Rousseau.  Though  of  Swiss  birth, 
Rousseau  belongs  to  the  literature  and 
history  of  France;  but  it  was  not  for  noth- 
ing that  he  was  brought  up  in  the  traditions 
of  Calvinistic  Geneva.  His  ideal  State 
would,  in  its  way,  have  been  little  better 
than  any  theocracy.  He  proposed  to  estab- 
lish a  "civil  religion"  which  was  to  be  a  sort 
of  undogmatic  Christianity.  But  certain 
dogmas,  which  he  considered  essential,  were 
to  be  imposed  on  all  citizens  on  pain  of 
banishment.  Such  were  the  existence  of  a 
deity,  the  future  bliss  of  the  good  and  punish- 
ment of  the  bad,  the  duty  of  tolerance 
towards  all  those  who  accepted  the  funda- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  111 

mental  articles  of  faith.  It  may  be  said  that 
a  State  founded  on  this  basis  would  be  fairly 
inclusive — that  all  Christian  sects'  and  many 
deists  could  find  a  place  in  it.  But  by  impos- 
ing indispensable  beliefs,  it  denies  the  principle 
of  toleration.  The  importance  of  Rousseau's 
idea  lies  in  the  fact  that  it  inspired  one  of 
the  experiments  in  religious  policy  which  were 
made  during  the  French  Revolution 

The  Revolution  established  religious  liberty 
in  France.  Most  of  the  leaders  were  un- 
orthodox. Their  rationalism  was  naturally 
of  the  eighteenth-century  type,  and  in  the 
preamble  to  the  Declaration  of  Rights  (1789) 
deism  was  asserted  by  the  words  "in  the 
presence  and  under  the  auspices  of  the  Su- 
preme Being"  (against  which  only  one  voice 
protested).  The  Declaration  laid  down  that 
no  one  was  to  be  vexed  on  account  of  his 
religious  opinions  provided  he  did  not  thereby 
trouble  public  order.  Catholicism  was  re- 
tained as  the  "dominant"  religion;  Prot- 
estants (but  not  Jews)  were  admitted  to 
public  office.  Mirabeau,  the  greatest  states- 
man of  the  day,  protested  strongly  against, 
the  use  of  words  like  "tolerance"  and  "domi- 
nant." He  said:  "The  most  unlimited 
liberty  of  religion  is  in  my  eyes  a  right  so 
sacred  that  to  express  it  by  the  word  '  tolera- 
tion '  seems  to  me  itself  a  sort  of  tyranny, 


112  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

since  the  authority  which  tolerates  might 
also  not  tolerate."  The  same  protest  was 
made  in  Thomas  Paine's  Rights  of  Man  which 
*  appeared  two  years  later:  'Toleration  is  not 
the  opposite  of  Intolerance,  but  is  the  counter- 
feit of  it.  Both  are  despotisms.  The  one 
assumes  itself  the  right  of  withholding  liberty 
of  conscience,  and  the  other  of  granting  it." 
Paine  was  an  ardent  deist,  and  he  added: 
"  Were  a  bill  brought  into  any  parliament,  en- 
titled 'An  Act  to  tolerate  or  grant  liberty  to 
the  Almighty  to  receive  the  worship  of  a  Jew 
or  a  Turk,'  or  'to  prohibit  the  Almighty  from 
receiving  it,'  all  men  would  startle  and  call 
it  blasphemy.  There  would  be  an  uproar. 
The  presumption  of  toleration  in  religious 
matters  would  then  present  itself  unmasked." 
The  Revolution  began  well,  but  the  spirit 
of  Mirabeau  was  not  in  the  ascendant 
throughout  its  course.  The  vicissitudes  in 
religious  policy  from  1789  to  1801  have  a 
particular  interest,  because  they  show  that 
the  principle  of  liberty  of  conscience  was  far 
from  possessing  the  minds  of  the  men  who 
were  proud  of  abolishing  the  intolerance  of 
the  government  which  they  had  overthrown. 
The  State  Church  was  reorganized  by  the 
Civil  Constitution  of  the  Clergy  (1790),  by 
which  French  citizens  were  forbidden  to 
acknowledge  the  authority  of  the  Pope  and 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  US 

the  appointment  of  Bishops  was  trans- 
ferred to  the  Electors  of  the  Departments,  so 
that  the  commanding  influence  passed  from 
the  Crown  to  the  nation.  Doctrine  and 
worship  were  not  touched.  Under  the  demo- 
cratic Republic  which  succeeded  the  fall  of 
the  monarchy  (1792-5)  this  Constitution 
was  maintained,  but  a  movement  to  dechris- 
tianize  France  was  inaugurated,  and  the 
Commune  of  Paris  ordered  the  churches  of 
all  religions  to  be  closed.  The  worship  of 
Reason,  with  rites  modelled  on  the  Catholic, 
was  organized  in  Paris  and  the  provinces. 
The  government,  violently  anti-Catholic, 
did  not  care  to  use  force  against  the  preva- 
lent faith;  direct  persecution  would  have 
weakened  the  national  defence  and  scandal- 
ized Europe.  They  naively  hoped  that  the 
superstition  would  disappear  by  degrees. 
Robespierre  declared  against  the  policy  of 
unchristianizing  France,  and  when  he  had 
the  power  (April,  1795),  he  established  as  a 
State  religion  the  worship  of  the  Supreme 
Being.  "The  French  people  recognizes  the 
existence  of  the  Supreme  Being  and  the  im- 
mortality of  the  Soul";  the  liberty  of  other 
cults  was  maintained.  Thus,  for  a  few 
months,  Rousseau's  idea  was  more  or  less 
realized.  It  meant  intolerance.  Atheism 
was  regarded  as  a  vice,  and  "all  were  athe- 
ists who  did  not  think  like  Robespierre." 


114  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

The  democratic  was  succeeded  by  the 
middle-class  Republic  (1795-9),  and  the  pol- 
icy of  its  government  was  to  hinder  the 
preponderance  of  any  one  religious  group; 
to  hold  the  balance  among  all  the  creeds, 
but  with  a  certain  partiality  against  the 
strongest,  the  Catholic,  which  threatened,  as 
was  thought,  to  destroy  the  others  or  even 
the  Republic.  The  plan  was  to  favour  the 
growth  of  new  rationalistic  cults,  and  to 
undermine  revealed  religion  by  a  secu- 
lar system  of  education.  Accordingly  the 
Church  was  separated  from  the  State  by  the 
Constitution  of  1795,  which  affirmed  the  lib- 
erty of  all  worship  and  withdrew  from  the 
Catholic  clergy  the  salaries  which  the  State 
had  hitherto  paid.  The  elementary  schools 
were  laicized.  The  Declaration  of  Rights, 
the  articles  of  the  Constitution,  and  republi- 
can morality  were  taught  instead  of  religion. 
An  enthusiast  declared  that  "the  religion  of 
Socrates,  Marcus  Aurelius,  and  Cicero  would 
soon  be  the  religion  of  the  world." 

A  new  rationalistic  religion  was  introduced 
under  the  name  of  Theophilanthropy.  It 
was  the  "natural  religion"  of  the  philosophers 
and  poets  of  the  century,  of  Voltaire  and  the 
English  deists— not  the  purified  Christianity 
of  Rousseau,  but  anterior  and  superior  to 
Christianity.    Its  doctrines,   briefly  formu- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  115 

lated,  were:  God,  immortality,  fraternity, 
humanity;  no  attacks  on  other  religions,  but 
respect  and  honour  towards  all;  gatherings 
in  a  family,  or  in  a  temple,  to  encourage  one 
another  to  practise  morality.  Protected  by 
the  government  sometimes  secretly,  some- 
times openly,  it  had  a  certain  success  among 
the  cultivated  classes. 

The  idea  of  the  lay  State  was  popularized 
under  this  rule,  and  by  the  end  of  the  cen- 
tury there  was  virtually  religious  peace  in 
France.  Under  the  Consulate  (from  1799) 
the  same  system  continued,  but  Napoleon 
ceased  to  protect  Theophilanthropy.  In 
1801,  though  there  seems  to  have  been  little 
discontent  with  the  existing  arrangement, 
Napoleon  decided  to  upset  it  and  bring  the 
Pope  upon  the  scene.  The  Catholic  religion, 
as  that  of  the  majority,  was  again  taken  under 
the  special  protection  of  the  State,  the  salaries 
of  the  clergy  again  paid  by  the  nation,  and  the 
Papal  authority  over  the  Church  again  rec- 
ognized within  well-defined  limits;  while  full 
toleration  of  other  religions  was  maintained. 
This  was  the  effect  of  the  Concordat  between 
the  French  Republic  and  the  Pope.  It  is  the 
judgment  of  a  high  authority  that  the  nation,  if 
it  had  been  consulted,  would  have  pronounced 
against  the  change.  It  may  be  doubted 
whether  this  is  true.    But  Napoleon's  policy 


116  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

seems  to  have  been  prompted  by  the  calcula- 
tion that,  using  the  Pope  as  an  instrument, 
he  could  control  the  consciences  of  men,  and 
more  easily  carry  out  his  plans  of  empire. 

Apart  from  its  ecclesiastical  policies  and  its 
experiments  in  new  creeds  based  on  the 
principles  of  rationalistic  thinkers,  the  French 
Revolution  itself  has  an  interest,  in  connexion 
with  our  subject,  as  an  example  of  the  co- 
ercion of  reason  by  an  intolerant  faith. 

The  leaders  believed  that,  by  applying 
certain  principles,  they  could  regenerate 
France  and  show  the  world  how  the  lasting 
happiness  of  mankind  can  be  secured.  They 
acted  in  the  name  of  reason,  but  their  prin- 
ciples were  articles  of  faith,  which  were 
accepted  just  as  blindly  and  irrationally  as 
the  dogmas  of  any  supernatural  creed.  One 
of  these  dogmas  was  the  false  doctrine  of 
Rousseau  that  man  is  a  being  who  is  naturally 
good  and  loves  justice  and  order.  Another 
was  the  illusion  that  all  men  are  equal  by 
nature.  The  puerile  conviction  prevailed 
that  legislation  could  completely  blot  out  the 
past  and  radically  transform  the  character  of 
a  society.  "Liberty,  equality,  and  fra- 
ternity" was  as  much  a  creed  as  the  Creed  of 
the  Apostles;  it  hypnotized  men's  minds  like 
a  revelation  from  on  high;  and  reason  had  as 
little  part  in  its  propagation  as  in  the  spread 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  117 

of  Christianity  or  of  Protestantism.  It 
meant  anything  but  equality,  fraternity,  or 
liberty,  especially  liberty,  when  it  was  trans- 
lated into  action  by  the  fanatical  apostles  of 
"Reason,"  who  were  blind  to  the  facts  of 
human  nature  and  defied  the  facts  of  econ- 
nomics.  Terror,  the  usual  instrument  in 
propagating  religions,  was  never  more  merci- 
lessly applied.  Any  one  who  questioned  the 
doctrines  was  a  heretic  and  deserved  a  here- 
tic's fate.  And,  as  in  most  religious  move- 
ments, the  milder  and  less  unreasonable 
spirits  succumbed  to  the  fanatics.  Never 
was  the  name  of  reason  more  grievously 
abused  than  by  those  who  believed  they  were 
inaugurating  her  reign. 

Religious  liberty,  however,  among  other 
good  things,  did  emerge  from  the  Revolu- 
tion, at  first  in  the  form  of  Separation,  and 
then  under  the  Concordat.  The  Concordat 
lasted  for  more  than  a  century,  under 
monarchies  and  republics,  till  it  was  abol- 
ished in  December,  1905,  when  the  system  of 
Separation  was  introduced  again. 

In  the  German  States  the  history  of  re- 
ligious liberty  differs  in  many  ways,  but  it 
resembles  the  development  in  France  in  so  far 
as  toleration  in  a  limited  form  was  at  first 
brought  about  by  war.  The  Thirty  Years' 
War,  which  divided  Germany  in  the  first  half 


118  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  which,  as 
in  the  English  Civil  War,  religion  and  politics 
were  mixed,  was  terminated  by  the  Peace  of 
Westphalia  (1648).  By  this  act,  three  re- 
ligions, the  Catholic,  the  Lutheran,  and  the 
Reformed  1  were  legally  recognized  by  the 
Holy  Roman  Empire,  and  placed  on  an 
equality;  all  other  religions  were  excluded. 
But  it  was  left  to  each  of  the  German  States, 
of  which  the  Empire  consisted,  to  tolerate  or 
not  any  religion  it  pleased.  That  is,  every 
prince  could  impose  on  his  subjects  whichever 
of  the  three  religions  he  chose,  and  refuse  to 
tolerate  the  others  in  his  territory.  But  he 
might  also  admit  one  or  both  of  the  others, 
and  he  might  allow  the  followers  of  other 
creeds  to  reside  in  his  dominion,  and  practise 
their  religion  within  the  precincts  of  their 
own  houses.  Thus  toleration  varied,  from 
State  to  State,  according  to  the  policy  of  each 
particular  prince. 

As  elsewhere,  so  in  Germany,  considera- 
tions of  political  expediency  promoted  the 
growth  of  toleration,  especially  in  Prussia; 
and  as  elsewhere,  theoretical  advocates  exer- 
cised great  influence  on  public  opinion.  But 
the  case  for  toleration  was  based  by  its 
German  defenders  chiefly  on  legal,  not,  as  in 

1  The  Reformed  Church  consists  of  the  followers  of  Calvin 
and  Zwingli. 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  119 

England  and  France,  on  moral  and  intel- 
lectual grounds.  They  regarded  it  as  a  ques- 
tion of  law,  and  discussed  it  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  legal  relations  between  State  and 
Church.  It  had  been  considered  long  ago 
from  this  standpoint  by  an  original  Italian 
thinker,  Marsilius  of  Padua  (thirteenth  cen- 
tury), who  had  maintained  that  the  Church 
had  no  power  to  employ  physical  coercion, 
and  that  if  the  lay  authority  punished  here- 
tics, the  punishment  was  inflicted  for  the 
violation  not  of  divine  ordinances  but  of  the 
law  of  the  State,  which  excluded  heretics 
from  its  territory. 

Christian  Thomasius  may  be  taken  as  a 
leading  exponent  of  the  theory  that  religious 
liberty  logically  follows  from  a  right  concep- 
tion of  law.  He  laid  down  in  a  series  of 
pamphlets  (1693-1697)  that  the  prince,  who 
alone  has  the  power  of  coercion,  has  no  right 
to  interfere  in  spiritual  matters,  while  the 
clergy  step  beyond  their  province  if  they 
interfere  in  secular  matters  or  defend  their 
faith  by  any  other  means  than  teaching.  But 
the  secular  power  has  no  legal  right  to  coerce 
heretics  unless  heresy  is  a  crime.  And  heresy 
is  not  a  crime,  but  an  error;  for  it  is  not  a 
matter  of  will.  Thomasius,  moreover,  urges 
the  view  that  the  public  welfare  has  nothing 
to  gain  from  unity  of  faith,  that  it  makes  no 


120  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

difference  what  faith  a  man  professes  so  long  as 
he  is  loyal  to  the  State.  His  toleration  indeed 
is  not  complete.  He  was  much  influenced  by 
the  writings  of  his  contemporary  Locke,  and 
he  excepts  from  the  benefit  of  toleration  the 
same  classes  which  Locke  excepted. 

Besides  the  influence  of  the  jurists,  we 
may  note  that  the  Pietistic  movement — a 
reaction  of  religious  enthusiasm  against  the 
formal  theology  of  the  Lutheran  divines — was 
animated  by  a  spirit  favourable  to  toleration ; 
and  that  the  cause  was  promoted  by  the 
leading  men  of  letters,  especially  by  Lessing, 
in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

But  perhaps  the  most  important  fact  of 
all  in  hastening  the  realization  of  religious 
liberty  in  Germany  was  the  accession  of  a 
rationalist  to  the  throne  of  Prussia,  in  the 
person  of  Frederick  the  Great.  A  few  months 
after  his  accession  (1740)  he  wrote  in  the 
margin  of  a  State  paper,  in  which  a  question 
of  religious  policy  occurred,  that  every  one 
should  be  allowed  to  get  to  heaven  in  his  own 
way.  His  view  that  morality  was  inde- 
pendent of  religion  and  therefore  compatible 
with  all  religions,  and  that  thus  a  man  could 
be  a  good  citizen — the  only  thing  which  the 
State  was  entitled  to  demand — whatever 
faith  he  might  profess,  led  to  the  logical  con- 
sequence of  complete  religious  liberty.    Cath- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  121 

olics  were  placed  on  an  equality  with  Protes- 
tants, and  the  Treaty  of  Westphalia  was 
violated  by  the  extension  of  full  toleration 
to  all  the  forbidden  sects.  Frederick  even 
conceived  the  idea  of  introducing  Mohamme- 
dan settlers  into  some  parts  of  his  realm. 
Contrast  England  under  George  III,  France 
under  Louis  XV,  Italy  under  the  shadow  of 
the  Popes.  It  is  an  important  fact  in  history, 
which  has  hardly  been  duly  emphasized,  that 
full  religious  liberty  was  for  the  first  time,  in 
any  country  in  modern  Europe,  realized  under 
a  free-thinking  ruler,  the  friend  of  the  great 
"blasphemer"  Voltaire. 

The  policy  and  principles  of  Frederick  were 
formulated  in  the  Prussian  Territorial  Code 
of  1794,  by  which  unrestricted  liberty  of  con- 
science was  guaranteed,  and  the  three  chief 
religions,  the  Lutheran,  the  Reformed,  and 
the  Catholic,  were  placed  on  the  same  footing 
and  enjoyed  the  same  privileges.  The  sys- 
tem is  "jurisdictional";  only,  three  Churches 
here  occupy  the  position  which  the  Anglican 
Church  alone  occupies  in  England.  The  rest 
of  Germany  did  not  begin  to  move  in  the 
direction  pointed  out  by  Prussia  until,  by  one 
of  the  last  acts  of  the  Holy  Roman  Empire 
(1803),  the  Westphalian  settlement  had 
been  modified.  Before  the  foundation  of  the 
new  Empire  (1870),  freedom  was  established 
throughout  Germany. 


122  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

In  Austria,  the  Emperor  Joseph  II  issued 
an  Edict  of  Toleration  in  1781,  which  may  be 
considered  a  broad  measure  for  a  Catholic 
State  at  that  time.  Joseph  was  a  sincere 
Catholic,  but  he  was  not  impervious  to  the 
enlightened  ideas  of  his  age;  he  was  an 
admirer  of  Frederick,  and  his  edict  was 
prompted  by  a  genuinely  tolerant  spirit,  such 
as  had  not  inspired  the  English  Act  of  1689. 
It  extended  only  to  the  Lutheran  and  Re- 
formed sects  and  the  communities  of  the 
Greek  Church  which  had  entered  into  union 
with  Rome,  and  it  was  of  a  limited  kind.  Re- 
ligious liberty  was  not  established  till  1867. 

The  measure  of  Joseph  applied  to  the 
Austrian  States  in  Italy,  and  helped  to  pre- 
pare that  country  for  the  idea  of  religious 
freedom.  It  is  notable  that  in  Italy  in  the 
eighteenth  century  toleration  found  its  ad- 
vocate, not  in  a  rationalist  or  a  philosopher, 
but  in  a  Catholic  ecclesiastic,  Tamburini, 
who  (under  the  name  of  his  friend  Traut- 
mansdorf)  published  a  work  On  Ecclesiastical 
and  Civil  Toleration  (1783).  A  sharp  line  is 
drawn  between  the  provinces  of  the  Church 
and  the  State,  persecution  and  the  Inquisi- 
tion are  condemned,  coercion  of  conscience 
is  declared  inconsistent  with  the  Christian 
spirit,  and  the  principle  is  laid  down  that  the 
sovran  should  only  exercise  coercion  where 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  123 

the  interests  of  public  safety  are  concerned. 
Like  Locke,  the  author  thinks  that  atheism 
is  a  legitimate  case  for  such  coercion. 

The  new  States  which  Napoleon  set  up  in 
Italy  exhibited  toleration  in  various  degrees, 
but  real  liberty  was  first  introduced  in 
Piedmont  by  Cavour  (1848),  a  measure  which 
prepared  the  way  for  the  full  liberty  which 
was  one  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  foundation 
of  the  Italian  kingdom  in  1870.  The  union  of 
Italy,  with  all  that  it  meant,  is  the  most 
signal  and  dramatic  act  in  the  triumph  of  the 
ideas  of  the  modern  State  over  the  traditional 
principles  of  the  Christian  Church.  Rome, 
which  preserved  those  principles  most  faith- 
fully, has  offered  a  steadfast,  we  may  say  a 
heroic,  resistance  to  the  liberal  ideas  which 
swept  Europe  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  guides  of  her  policy  grasped  thoroughly 
the  danger  which  liberal  thought  meant  for 
an  institution  which,  founded  in  a  remote 
past,. claimed  to  be  unchangeable  and  never 
out  of  date.  Gregory  XVI  issued  a  solemn 
protest  maintaining  authority  against  free- 
dom, the  mediaeval  against  the  modern  ideal, 
in  an  Encyclical  Letter  (1832),  which  was 
intended  as  a  rebuke  to  some  young  French 
Catholics  (Lamennais  and  his  friends)  who 
had  conceived  the  promising  idea  of  trans- 
forming the  Church  by   the  Liberal  spirit 


124  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

of  the  day.  The  Pope  denounces  "the  ab- 
surd and  erroneous  maxim,  or  rather  insanity, 
that  liberty  of  conscience  should  be  procured 
and  guaranteed  to  every  one.  The  path  to 
this  pernicious  error  is  prepared  by  that  full 
and  unlimited  liberty  of  thought  which  is 
spread  abroad  to  the  misfortune  of  Church 
and  State  and  which  certain  persons,  with  ex- 
cessive impudence,  venture  to  represent  as 
an  advantage  for  religion.  Hence  comes  the 
corruption  of  youth,  contempt  for  religion 
and  for  the  most  venerable  laws,  and  a  gen- 
eral mental  change  in  the  world — in  short  the 
most  deadly  scourge  of  society;  since  the  ex- 
perience of  history  has  shown  that  the  States 
which  have  shone  by  their  wealth  and  power 
and  glory  have  perished  just  by  this  evil — 
immoderate  freedom  of  opinion,  licence  of 
conversation,  and  love  of  novelties.  With 
this  is  connected  the  liberty  of  publishing 
any  writing  of  any  kind.  This  is  a  deadly 
and  execrable  liberty  for  which  we  cannot 
feel  sufficient  horror,  though  some  men  dare 
to  acclaim  it  noisily  and  enthusiastically." 
A  generation  later  Pius  IX  was  to  astonish 
the  world  by  a  similar  manifesto — his  Sylla- 
bus of  Modern  Errors  (1864).  Yet,  not- 
withstanding the  fundamental  antagonism 
between  the  principles  of  the  Church  and  the 
drift  of  modern  civilization,  the  Papacy  sur- 


RELIGIOUS  TOLERATION  125 

vivas,  powerful  and  respected,  in  a  world 
where  the  ideas  which  it  condemned  have 
become  the  commonplace  conditions  of  life. 
The  progress  of  Western  nations  from  the 
system  of  unity  which  prevailed  in  the  fif- 
teenth, to  the  system  of  liberty  which  was 
the  rule  in  the  nineteenth  century,  was  slow 
and  painful,  illogical  and  wavering,  generally 
dictated  by  political  necessities,  seldom  in- 
spired by  deliberate  conviction.     We  have 
seen  how  religious  liberty  has  been  realized, 
so  far  as  the  law  is  concerned,  under  two 
distinct  systems,  "Jurisdiction"  and  "Sepa- 
ration."    But  legal  toleration  may  coexist 
with  much  practical  intolerance,  and  liberty 
before  the  law  is  compatible  with  serious 
disabilities  of  which   the  law  cannot  take 
account.     For    instance,    the   expression    of 
unorthodox  opinions  may  exclude  a  man  from 
obtaining  a  secular  post  or  hinder  his  advance- 
ment.    The  question  has  been  asked,  which 
of  the  two  systems  is  more  favourable  to  the 
creation  of    a   tolerant   social    atmosphere? 
Ruffini  (of  whose  excellent  work  on  Religious 
Liberty  I  have  made  much  use  in  this  chap- 
ter) decides  in  favour  of  Jurisdiction.     He 
points  out  that  while  Socinus,  a  true  friend 
of    liberty  of    thought,    contemplated    this 
system,   the  Anabaptists,   whose  spirit  was 
intolerant,  sought  Separation.    More  impor- 


126  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

tant  is  the  observation  that  in  Germany, 
England,  and  Italy,  where  the  most  powerful 
Church  or  Churches  are  under  the  control  of 
the  State,  there  is  more  freedom,  more  tol- 
erance of  opinion,  than  in  many  of  the  Ameri- 
can States  where  Separation  prevails.  A 
hundred  years  ago  the  Americans  showed 
appalling  ingratitude  to  Thomas  Paine,  who 
had  done  them  eminent  service  in  the  War  of 
Independence,  simply  because  he  published 
a  very  unorthodox  book.  It  is  notorious 
that  free  thought  is  still  a  serious  hindrance 
and  handicap  to  an  American,  even  in  most 
of  the  Universities.  This  proves  that  Sepa- 
ration is  not  an  infallible  receipt  for  pro- 
ducing tolerance.  But  I  see  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  public  opinion  in  America  would 
be  different,  if  either  the  Federal  Republic  or 
the  particular  States  had  adopted  Jurisdic- 
tion. Given  legal  liberty  imder  either  sys- 
tem, I  should  say  that  the  tolerance  of  public 
opinion  depends  on  social  conditions  and  es- 
pecially on  the  degree  of  culture  among  the 
educated  classes. 

From  this  sketch  it  will  be  seen  that  tol- 
eration was  the  outcome  of  new  political 
circumstances  and  necessities,  brought  about 
by  the  disunion  of  the  Church  through  the 
Reformation.  But  it  meant  that  in  those 
States  which  granted  toleration  the  opinion  of 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     127 

a  sufficiently  influential  group  of  the  govern- 
ing class  was  ripe  for  the  change,  and  this 
new  mental  attitude  was  in  a  great  measure 
due  to  the  scepticism  and  rationalism  which 
were  diffused  by  the  Renaissance  movement, 
and  which  subtly  and  unconsciously  had 
affected  the  minds  of  many  who  were  sin- 
cerely devoted  to  rigidly  orthodox  beliefs; 
so  effective  is  the  force  of  suggestion.  In  the 
next  two  chapters  the  advance  of  reason  at 
the  expense  of  faith  will  be  traced  through 
the  seventeenth,  eighteenth,  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 

CHAPTER  VI 

the  growth  of  rationalism 

(seventeenth  and  eighteenth 
centuries) 

During  the  last  three  hundred  years  reason 
has  been  slowly  but  steadily  destroying  Chris- 
tian  mythology  and  exposing  the  pretensions 
of  supernatural  revelation.  The  progress  of 
rationalism  falls  naturally  into  two  periods. 
(1)  In  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  cen- 
turies those  thinkers  who  rejected  Christian 
theology  and  the  book  on  which  it  relies  were 
mainly  influenced  by  the  inconsistencies, 
contradictions,  and  absurdities  which  they 
discovered  in  the  evidence,  and  by  the  moral 


128         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

difficulties  of  the  creed.  Some  scientific 
facts  were  known  which  seemed  to  reflect  on 
the  accuracy  of  Revelation,  but  arguments 
based  on  science  were  subsidiary.  (2)  In  the 
nineteenth  century  the  discoveries  of  science 
in  many  fields  bore  with  full  force  upon 
fabrics  which  had  been  constructed  in  a  naTve 
and  ignorant  age;  and  historical  criticism 
undermined  methodically  the  authority  of  the 
sacred  documents  which  had  hitherto  been 
exposed  chiefly  to  the  acute  but  unmethodical 
criticisms  of  common  sense. 

A  disinterested  love  of  facts,  without  any 
regard  to  the  bearing  which  those  facts  may 
have  on  one's  hopes  or  fears  or  destiny,  is  a 
rare  quality  in  all  ages,  and  it  had  been  very 
rare  indeed  since  the  ancient  days  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  It  means  the  scientific  spirit. 
Now  in  the  seventeenth  century  we  may  say 
(without  disrespect  to  a  few  precursors)  that 
the  modern  study  of  natural  science  began, 
and  in  the  same  period  we  have  a  series  of 
famous  thinkers  who  were  guided  by  a  dis- 
interested love  of  truth.  Of  the  most  acute 
minds  some  reached  the  conclusion  that  the 
Christian  scheme  of  the  world  is  irrational, 
and  according  to  their  temperament  some 
rejected  it,  whilst  others,  like  the  great 
Frenchman  Pascal,  fell  back  upon  an  un- 
reasoning  act   of   faith.     Bacon,    who   pro- 


THE -GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     129 

fessed  orthodoxy,  was  perhaps  at  heart  a 
deist,  but  in  any  case  the  whole  spirit  of  his 
writings  was  to  exclude  authority  from  the 
domain  of  scientific  investigation  which  he  did 
so  much  to  stimulate.  Descartes,  illustrious 
not  only  as  the  founder- -of  modern  meta- 
physics but  also  by  his  original  contributions 
to  science,  might  seek  to  conciliate  the  eccle- 
siastical authorities — his  temper  was  timid — 
but  his  philosophical  method  was  a  power- 
ful incentive  to  rationalistic  thought.  The 
general  tendency  of  superior  intellects  was 
to  exalt  reason  at  the  expense  of  authority; 
and  in  England  this  principle  was  established 
so  firmly  by  Locke,  that  throughout  the  theo- 
logical warfare  of  the  eighteenth  century 
both  parties  relied  on  reason,  and  no  theo- 
logian of  repute  assumed  faith  to  be  a  higher 
faculty. 

A  striking  illustration  of  the  gradual 
encroachments  of  reason  is  the  change  which 
was  silently  wrought  in  public  opinion  on  the 
subject  of  witchcraft.  The  famous  efforts  of 
James  I  to  carry  out  the  Biblical  command, 
'Thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live,"  were 
outdone  by  the  zeal  of  the  Puritans  under  the 
Commonwealth  to  suppress  the  wicked  old 
women  who  had  commerce  with  Satan. 
After  the  Restoration,  the  belief  in  witchcraft 
declined    among    educated    people — though 


130  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

some  able  writers  maintained  it — and  there 
were  few  executions.  The  last  trial  of  a 
witch  was  in  1712,  when  some  clergymen  in 
Hertfordshire  prosecuted  Jane  Wenham. 
The  jury  found  her  guilty,  but  the  judge, 
who  had  summed  up  in  her  favour,  was  able 
to  procure  the  remission  of  her  sentence; 
and  the  laws  against  witchcraft  were  repealed 
in  1735.  John  Wesley  said  with  perfect 
truth  that  to  disbelieve  in  witchcraft  is  to 
disbelieve  in  the  Bible.  In  France  and  in 
Holland  the  decline  of  belief  and  interest  in 
this  particular  form  of  Satan's  activity  was 
simultaneous.  In  Scotland,  where  theology 
was  very  powerful,  a  woman  was  burnt  in 
1722.  It  can  be  no  mere  coincidence  that 
the  general  decline  of  this  superstition  belongs 
to  the  age  which  saw  the  rise  of  modern  sci- 
ence and  modern  philosophy. 

Hobbes,  who  was  perhaps  the  most  brilliant 
English  thinker  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
was  a  freethinker  and  materialist.  He  had 
come  under  the  influence  of  his  friend  the 
French  philosopher  Gassendi,  who  had  re- 
vived materialism  in  its  Epicurean  shape. 
Yet  he  was  a  champion  not  of  freedom  of 
conscience  but  of  coercion  in  its  most  un- 
compromising form.  In  the  political  theory 
which  he  expounded  in  Leviathan,  the  sovran 
has  autocratic  power  in  the  domain  of  doc- 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     131 

trine,  as  in  everything  else,  and  it  is  the  duty 
of  subjects  to  conform  to  the  religion  which 
the  sovran  imposes.  Religious  persecution 
is  thus  defended,  but  no  independent  power 
is  left  to  the  Church.  But  the  principles  on 
which  Hobbes  built  up  his  theory  were  ration- 
alistic. He  separated  morality  from  religion 
and  identified  "the  true  moral  philosophy" 
with  the  "true  doctrine  of  the  laws  of  nature." 
What  he  really  thought  of  religion  could  be 
inferred  from  his  remark  that  the  fanciful  fear 
of  things  invisible  (due  to  ignorance)  is  the 
natural  seed  of  that  feeling  which,  in  himself, 
a  man  calls  religion,  but,  in  those  who  fear 
or  worship  the  invisible  power  differently, 
superstition.  In  the  reign  of  Charles  II 
Hobbes  was  silenced  and  his  books  were 
burned. 

Spinoza,  the  Jewish  philosopher  of  Holland, 
owed  a  great  deal  to  Descartes  and  (in  politi- 
cal speculation)  to  Hobbes,  but  his  philosophy 
meant  a  far  wider  and  more  open  breach  with 
orthodox  opinion  than  either  of  his  masters 
had  ventured  on.  He  conceived  ultimate 
reality,  which  he  called  God,  as  an  absolutely 
perfect,  impersonal  Being,  a  substance  whose 
nature  is  constituted  by  two  "attributes" — 
thought  and  spatial  extension.  When  Spi- 
noza speaks  of  love  of  God,  in  which  he  con- 
sidered happiness  to  consist,  he  means  knowl- 


132  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

edge  and  contemplation  of  the  order  of  nature, 
including  human  nature,  which  is  subject  to 
fixed,  invariable  laws.  He  rejects  free-will 
and  the  "superstition,"  as  he  calls  it,  of  final 
causes  in  nature.  If  we  want  to  label  his 
philosophy,  we  may  say  that  it  is  a  form  of 
pantheism.  It  has  often  been  described  as 
atheism.  If  atheism  means,  as  I  suppose  in 
ordinary  use  it  is  generally  taken  to  mean, 
rejection  of  a  personal  God,  Spinoza  was  an 
atheist.  It  should  be  observed  that  in  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  atheist 
was  used  in  the  wildest  way  as  a  term  of 
abuse  for  freethinkers,  and  when  we  read 
of  atheists  (except  in  careful  writers)  we  may 
generally  assume  that  the  persons  so  stigma- 
tized were  really  deists,  that  is,  they  believed 
in  a  personal  God  but  not  in  Revelation.1 

Spinoza's  daring  philosophy  was  not  in 
harmony  with  the  general  trend  of  specula- 
tion at  the  time,  and  did  not  exert  any 
profound  influence  on  thought  till  a  much 
later  period.  The  thinker  whose  writings 
appealed  most  to  the  men  of  his  age  and  were 
most  opportune  and  effective  was  John  Locke, 
who  professed  more  or  less  orthodox  Angli- 
canism. His  great  contribution  to  philoso- 
phy is  equivalent  to  a  very  powerful  defence 

1  For  the  sake  of  simplicity  I  use  "deist"  in  this  sense 
throughout,  though  "theist"  is  now  the  usual  term. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     133 

of  reason  against  the  usurpations  of  authority. 
The  object  of  his  Essay  on  the  Human  Under- 
standing (1690)  is  to  show  that  all  knowledge 
is  derived  from  experience.  He  subordinated 
faith  completely  to  reason.  "While  he  ac- 
cepted the  Christian  revelation,  he  held  that 
revelation  if  it  contradicted  the  higher  tri- 
bunal of  reason  must  be  rejected,  and  that 
revelation  cannot  give  us  knowledge  as  cer- 
tain as  the  knowledge  which  reason  gives. 
"He  that  takes  awav  reason  to  make  room  for 
revelation  puts  out  the  light  of  both;  and 
does  much  what  the  same  as  if  he  would  per- 
suade a  man  to  put  out  his  eyes,  the  better  to 
receive  the  remote  light  of  an  invisible  star 
by  a  telescope."  He  wrote  a  book  to  show 
that  the  Christian  revelation  is  not  contrary 
to  reason,  and  its  title,  The  Reasonableness  of 
Christianity,  sounds  the  note  of  all  religious 
controversy  in  England  during  the  next  hun- 
dred years.  Both  the  orthodox  and  their 
opponents  warmly  agreed  that  reasonableness 
was  the  onlv  test  of  the  claims  of  revealed 
religion.  It  was  under  the  direct  influence 
of  Locke  that  Toland,  an  Irishman  who  had 
been  converted  from  Roman  Catholicism, 
composed  a  sensational  book,  Christianity 
Not  Mysterious  (1696).  He  assumes  that 
Christianity  is  true  and  argues  that  there  can 
be  no  mysteries  in  it,  because  mysteries,  that 


134  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

is,  unintelligible  dogmas,  cannot  be  accepted 
by  reason.  And  if  a  reasonable  Deity  gave  a 
revelation,  its  purpose  must  be  to  enlighten, 
not  to  puzzle.  The  assumption  of  the  truth 
of  Christianity  was  a  mere  pretence,  as  an 
intelligent  reader  could  not  fail  to  see.  The 
work  was  important  because  it  drew  the 
logical  inference  from  Locke's  philosophy, 
and  it  had  a  wide  circulation.  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montagu  met  a  Turkish  Effendi  at 
Belgrade  who  asked  her  for  news  of  Mr. 
Toland. 

It  is  characteristic  of  this  stage  of  the 
struggle  between  reason  and  authority  that 
(excepting  the  leading  French  thinkers  in 
the  eighteenth  century)  the  rationalists,  who 
attacked  theology,  generally  feigned  to  ac- 
knowledge the  truth  of  the  ideas  which  they 
were  assailing.  They  pretended  that  their 
speculations  did  not  affect  religion;  they 
could  separate  the  domains  of  reason  and 
of  faith;  they  could  show  that  Revelation 
was  superfluous  without  questioning  it;  they 
could  do  homage  to  orthodoxy  and  lay 
down  views  with  which  orthodoxy  was  irre- 
concilable. The  errors  which  they  exposed 
in  the  sphere  of  reason  were  ironically  allowed 
to  be  truths  in  the  sphere  of  theology.  The 
mediaeval  principle  of  double  truth  and  other 
shifts   were    resorted    to,   in    self-protection 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     135 

against  the  tyranny  of  orthodoxy — though 
they  did  not  always  avail;  and  in  reading 
much  of  the  rationalistic  literature  of  this 
period  we  have  to  read  between  the  lines. 
Bayle  is  an  interesting  instance. 

If  Locke's  philosophy,  by  setting  authority 
in  its  place  and  deriving  all  knowledge  from 
experience,  was  a  powerful  aid  to  rationalism, 
his  contemporary  Bayle  worked  in  the  same 
direction  by  the  investigation  of  history. 
Driven  from  France  (see  above,  p.  107),  he 
lived  at  Amsterdam,  where  he  published  his 
Philosophical  Dictionary.  He  was  really  a 
freethinker,  but  he  never  dropped  the  dis- 
guise of  orthodoxy,  and  this  lends  a  particular 
piquancy  to  his  work.  He  takes  a  delight 
in  marshalling  all  the  objections  which 
heretics  had  made  to  essential  Christian 
dogmas.  He  exposed  without  mercy  the 
crimes  and  brutalities  of  David,  and  showed 
that  this  favourite  of  the  Almighty  was  a 
person  with  whom  one  would  refuse  to  shake 
hands.  There  was  a  great  outcry  at  this 
unedifying  candour.  Bayle,  in  replying, 
adopted  the  attitude  of  Montaigne  and 
Pascal,  and  opposed  faith  to  reason. 

The  theological  virtue  of  faith,  he  said, 
consists  in  believing  revealed  truths  simply 
and  solely  on  God's  authority.  If  you 
believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  for 


136  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

philosophical  reasons,  you  are  orthodox,  but 
you  have  no  part  in  faith.  The  merit  of 
faith  becomes  greater,  in  proportion  as  the 
revealed  truth  surpasses  all  the  powers  of 
our  mind;  the  more  incomprehensible  the 
truth  and  the  more  repugnant  to  reason,  the 
greater  is  the  sacrifice  we  make  in  accepting 
it,  the  deeper  our  submission  to  God.  There- 
fore a  merciless  inventory  of  the  objections 
which  reason  has  to  urge  against  fundamental 
doctrines  serves  to  exalt  the  merits  of  faith. 
The  Dictionary  was  also  criticized  for 
the  justice  done  to  the  moral  excellencies  of 
persons  who  denied  the  existence  of  God. 
Bayle  replies  that  if  he  had  been  able  to  find 
any  atheistical  thinkers  who  lived  bad  lives, 
he  would  have  been  delighted  to  dwell  on 
their  vices,  but  he  knew  of  none  such.  As 
for  the  criminals  you  meet  in  history,  whose 
abominable  actions  make  you  tremble,  their 
impieties  and  blasphemies  prove  they  be- 
lieved in  a  Divinity.  This  is  a  natural  con- 
sequence of  the  theological  doctrine  that  the 
Devil,  who  is  incapable  of  atheism,  is  the 
instigator  of  all  the  sins  of  men.  For  man's 
wickedness  must  clearly  resemble  that  of  the 
Devil  and  must  therefore  be  joined  to  a  be- 
lief in  God's  existence,  since  the  Devil  is  not 
an  atheist.  And  is  it  not  a  proof  of  the  in- 
finite wisdom  of  God  that  the  worst  criminals 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     137 

are  not  atheists,  and  that  most  of  the  atheists 
whose  names  are  recorded  have  been  honest 
men?  By  this  arrangement  Providence  sets 
bounds  to  the  corruption  of  man;  for  if 
atheism  and  moral  wickedness  were  united  in 
the  same  persons,  the  societies  of  earth  would 
be  exposed  to  a  fatal  inundation  of  sin. 

There  was  much  more  in  the  same  vein; 
and  the  upshot  was,  under  the  thin  veil  of 
serving  faith,  to  show  that  the  Christian 
dogmas  were  essentially  unreasonable. 

Bayle's  work,  marked  by  scholarship  and 
extraordinary  learning,  had  a  great  influence 
in  England  as  well  as  in  France.  It  supplied 
weapons  to  assailants  of  Christianity  in  both 
countries.  At  first  the  assault  was  carried 
on  with  most  vigour  and  ability  by  the  Eng- 
lish deists,  who,  though  their  writings  are 
little  read  now,  did  memorable  work  by  their 
polemic  against  the  authority  of  revealed 
religion. 

The  controversy  between  the  deists  and 
their  orthodox  opponents  turned  on  the 
question  whether  the  Deity  of  natural  re- 
ligion— the  God  whose  existence,  as  was 
thought,  could  be  proved  by  reason — can  be 
identified  with  the  author  of  the  Christian 
revelation.  To  the  deists  this  seemed  im- 
possible. The  nature  of  the  alleged  revela- 
tion seemed  inconsistent  with  the  character 


133  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

of  the  God  to  whom  reason  pointed.  The 
defenders  of  revelation,  at  least  all  the  most 
competent,  agreed  with  the  deists  in  making 
reason  supreme,  and  through  this  reliance 
on  reason  some  of  them  fell  into  heresies. 
Clarke,  for  instance,  one  of  the  ablest,  was 
very  unsound  on  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity. 
It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  with  both  sec- 
tions the  interest  of  morality  was  the  prin- 
cipal motive.  The  orthodox  held  that  the 
revealed  doctrine  of  future  rewards  and 
punishments  is  necessary  for  morality;  the 
deists,  that  morality  depends  on  reason 
alone,  and  that  revelation  contains  a  great 
deal  that  is  repugnant  to  moral  ideals. 
Throughout  the  eighteenth  century  moral- 
ity was  the  guiding  consideration  with  An- 
glican Churchmen,  and  religious  emotion, 
finding  no  satisfaction  within  the  Church, 
was  driven,  as  it  were,  outside,  and  sought 
an  outlet  in  the  Methodism  of  Wesley  and 
Whitefield. 

Spinoza  had  laid  down  the  principle  that 
Scripture  must  be  interpreted  like  any  other 
book  (1670),1  and  with  the  deists  this  prin- 
ciple was  fundamental.  In  order  to  avoid 
persecution  they  generally  veiled  their  con- 

1  Spinoza's  Theological  Political  Treatise,  which  deals  with 
the  interpretation  of  Scripture,  was  translated  into  English 
in  1689. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     139 

elusions  under  sufficiently  thin  disguises. 
Hitherto  the  Press  Licensing  Act  (1662)  had 
very  effectually  prevented  the  publication 
of  heterodox  works,  and  it  is  from  orthodox 
works  denouncing  infidel  opinions  that  we 
know  how  rationalism  was  spreading.  But 
in  1695,  the  Press  Law  was  allowed  to  drop, 
and  immediately  deistic  literature  began  to 
appear.  There  was,  however,  the  danger 
of  prosecution  under  the  Blasphemy  laws. 
There  were  three  legal  weapons  for  coercing 
those  who  attacked  Christianity:  (1)  The 
Ecclesiastical  Courts  had  and  have  the  power 
of  imprisoning  for  a  maximum  term  of  six 
months,  for  atheism,  blasphemy,  heresy,  and 
damnable  opinions.  (2)  The  common  law 
as  interpreted  by  Lord  Chief  Justice  Hale  in 
1676,  when  a  certain  Taylor  was  charged 
with  having  said  that  religion  was  a  cheat 
and  blasphemed  against  Christ.  The  ac- 
cused was  condemned  to  a  fine  and  the  pillory 
by  the  Judge,  who  ruled  that  the  Court  of 
King's  Bench  has  jurisdiction  in  such  a  case, 
inasmuch  as  blasphemous  words  of  the  kind 
are  an  offence  against  the  laws  and  the  State, 
and  to  speak  against  Christianity  is  to  speak 
in  subversion  of  the  law,  since  Christianity  is 
"parcel  of  the  laws  of  England."  (3)  The 
statute  of  1698  enacts  that  if  any  person 
educated  in  the  Christian  religion  "shall  by 


140  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

writing,  printing,  teaching,  or  advised  speak- 
ing deny  any  one  of  the  persons  in  the  Holy 
Trinity  to  be  God,  or  shall  assert  or  maintain 
there  are  more  gods  than  one,  or  shall  deny 
the  Christian  religion  to  be  true,  or  shall 
deny  the  Holy  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and 
New  Testament  to  be  of  divine  authority,"  is 
convicted,  he  shall  for  the  first  offence  be 
adjudged  incapable  to  hold  any  public  offices 
or  employments,  and  on  the  second  shall  lose 
his  civil  rights  and  be  imprisoned  for  three 
years.  This  Statute  expressly  states  as  its 
motive  the  fact  that  "many  persons  have  of 
late  years  openly  avowed  and  published 
many  blasphemous  and  impious  opinions 
contrary  to  the  doctrine  and  principles  of  the 
Christian  religion." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  most  trials  for  blas- 
phemy during  the  past  two  hundred  years  fall 
under  the  second  head.  But  the  new  Statute 
of  1098  was  very  intimidating,  and  we  can 
easily  understand  how  it  drove  heterodox 
writers  to  ambiguous  disguises.  One  of 
these  disguises  was  allegorical  interpretation 
of  Scripture.  They  showed  that  literal  in- 
terpretation led  to  absurdities  or  to  incon- 
sistencies with  the  wisdom  and  justice  of 
God,  and  pretended  to  infer  that  allegorical 
interpretation  must  be  substituted.  But 
they  meant  the  reader  to  reject  their  pre- 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     141 

tended    solution    and    draw    a    conclusion 
damaging  to  Revelation. 

Among  the  arguments  used  in  favour  of  the 
truth  of  Revelation  the  fulfilment  of  proph- 
ecies and  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament 
were  conspicuous.  Anthony  Collins,  a  coun- 
try gentleman  who  was  a  disciple  of  Locke, 
published  in  1733  his  Discourse  on  the 
Grounds  and  Reasons  of  the  Christian  Religion, 
in  which  he  drastically  exposed  the  weakness 
of  the  evidence  for  fulfilment  of  prophecy, 
depending  as  it  does  on  forced  and  unnatural 
figurative  interpretations.  Twenty  years 
before  he  had  written  a  Discourse  of  Free- 
thinking  (in  which  Bayle's  influence  is  evi- 
dent) pleading  for  free  discussion  and  the 
reference  of  all  religious  questions  to  reason. 
He  complained  of  the  general  intolerance 
which  prevailed;  but  the  same  facts  which 
testify  to  intolerance  testify  also  to  the 
spread  of  unbelief. 

Collins  escaped  with  comparative  impu- 
nity, but  Thomas  Woolston,  a  Fellow  of 
Sidney  Sussex  College,  Cambridge,  who 
wrote  six  aggressive  Discourses  on  the  Miracles 
of  our  Saviour  (1727-1730)  paid  the  penalty 
for  his  audacity.  Deprived  of  his  Fellowship, 
he  was  prosecuted  for  libel,  and  sentenced 
to  a  fine  of  £100  and  a  year's  imprisonment. 
Unable  to  pay,  he  died  in  prison.     He  does 


142  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

not  adopt  the  line  of  arguing  that  miracles 
are  incredible  or  impossible.  He  examines 
the  chief  miracles  related  in  the  Gospels, 
and  shows  with  great  ability  and  shrewd 
common  sense  that  they  are  absurd  or 
unworthy  of  the  performer.  He  pointed 
out,,  as  Huxley  was  to  point  out  in  a  con- 
troversy with  Gladstone,  that  the  miraculous 
driving  of  devils  into  a  herd  of  swine  was  an 
unwarrantable  injury  to  somebody's  prop- 
erty. On  the  story  of  the  Divine  blasting 
of  the  fig  tree,  he  remarks:  "What  if  a  yeo- 
man of  Kent  should  go  to  look  for  pippins  in 
his  orchard  at  Easter  (the  supposed  time  that 
Jesus  sought  for  these  figs)  and  because  of  a 
disappointment  cut  down  his  trees?  What 
then  would  his  neighbours  make  of  him? 
Nothing  less  than  a  laughing-stock;  and  if 
the  story  got  into  our  Publick  News,  he 
would  be  the  jest  and  ridicule  of  mankind." 

Or  take  his  comment  on  the  miracle  of  the 
Pool  of  Bethesda,  where  an  angel  used  to 
trouble  the  waters  and  the  man  who  first 
entered  the  pool  was  cured  of  his  infirmity. 
"An  odd  and  a  merry  way  of  conferring  a 
Divine  mercy.  And  one  would  think  that 
the  angels  of  God  did  this  for  their  own 
diversion  more  than  to  do  good  to  mankind. 
Just  as  some  throw  a  bone  among  a  kennel 
of  hounds  for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     143 

quarrel  for  it,  or  as  others  cast  a  piece  of 
money  among  a  company  of  boys  for  the 
sport  of  seeing  them  scramble  for  it,  so  was 
the  pastime  of  the  angels  here."  In  dealing 
with  the  healing  of  the  woman  who  suffered 
from  a  bloody  flux,  he  asks:  "What  if 
we  had  been  told  of  the  Pope's  curing  an 
haemorrhage  like  this  before  us,  what  would 
Protestants  have  said  to  it?  Why,  'that  a 
foolish,  credulous,  and  superstitious  woman 
had  fancied  herself  cured  of  some  slight 
indisposition,  and  the  crafty  Pope  and  his 
adherents,  aspiring  after  popular  applause, 
magnified  the  presumed  cure  into  a  miracle.' 
The  application  of  such  a  supposed  story  of 
a  miracle  wrought  by  the  Pope  is  easy;  and 
if  Infidels,  Jews,  and  Mahometans,  who  have 
no  better  opinion  of  Jesus  than  we  have  of 
the  Pope,  should  make  it,  there's  no  help 
for  it." 

Woolston  professed  no  doubts  of  the  in- 
spiration of  Scripture.  While  he  argued  that 
it  was  out  of  the  question  to  suppose  the 
miracles  literally  true,  he  pretended  to  be- 
lieve in  the  fantastic  theory  that  they  were 
intended  allegorically  as  figures  of  Christ's 
mysterious  operations  in  the  soul  of  man. 
Origen,  a  not  very  orthodox  Christian  Father, 
had  employed  the  allegorical  method,  and 
Woolston   quotes   him   in   his  favour.     His 


144  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

vigorous  criticisms  vary  in  value,  but  many 
of  them  hit  the  nail  on  the  head,  and  the 
fashion  of  some  modern  critics  to  pass  over 
Woolston's  productions  as  unimportant  be- 
cause they  are  "ribald"  or  "coarse,"  is 
perfectly  unjust.  The  pamphlets  had  an 
enormous  sale,  and  Woolston's  notoriety  is 
illustrated  by  the  anecdote  of  the  "jolly 
young  woman  "  who  met  him  walking  abroad 
and  accosted  him  with  "You  old  rogue,  are 
you  not  hanged  yet?"  Mr.  Woolston  an- 
swered, "Good  woman,  I  know  you  not; 
pray  what  have  I  done  to  offend  you?" 
'You  have  writ  against  my  Saviour,"  she 
said;  "what  would  become  of  my  poor  sinful 
soul  if  it  was  not  for  my  dear  Saviour?" 

About  the  same  time,  Matthew  Tindal  (a 
Fellow  of  All  Souls)  attacked  Revelation 
from  a  more  general  point  of  view.  In  his 
Christianity  as  old  as  the  Creation  (1730)  he 
undertook  to  show  that  the  Bible  as  a  revela- 
tion is  superfluous,  for  it  adds  nothing  to 
natural  religion,  which  God  revealed  to  man 
from  the  very  first  by  the  sole  light  of  reason. 
He  argues  that  those  who  defend  Revealed 
religion  by  its  agreement  with  Natural 
religion,  and  thus  set  up  a  double  govern- 
ment of  reason  and  authority,  fall  between 
the  two.  "It 's  an  odd  jumble,"  he  observes, 
"to  prove  the  truth  of  a  book  by  the  truth 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     145 

of  the  doctrines  it  contains,  and  at  the  same 
time  conclude  those  doctrines  to  be  true 
because  contained  in  that  book."  He  goes 
on  to  criticize  the  Bible  in  detail.  In  order 
to  maintain  its  infallibility,  without  doing 
violence  to  reason,  you  have,  when  you  find 
irrational  statements,  to  torture  them  and 
depart  from  the  literal  sense.  Would  you 
think  that  a  Mohammedan  was  governed  by 
his  Koran,  who  on  all  occasions  departed 
from  the  literal  sense?  "Nay,  would  you 
not  tell  him  that  his  inspired  book  fell 
infinitely  short  of  Cicero's  uninspired  writ- 
ings, where  there  is  no  such  occasion  to 
recede  from  the  letter?" 

As  to  chronological  and  physical  errors, 
which  seemed  to  endanger  the  infallibility 
of  the  Scriptures,  a  bishop  had  met  the  ar- 
gument by  saying,  reasonably  enough,  that 
in  the  Bible  God  speaks  according  to  the 
conceptions  of  those  to  whom  he  speaks,  and 
that  it  is  not  the  business  of  Revelation  to 
rectify  their  opinions  in  such  matters.  Tindal 
made  this  rejoinder : — 

"Is  there  no  difference  between  God's  not 
rectifying  men's  sentiments  in  those  matters 
and  using  himself  such  sentiments  as  needs 
be  rectified;  or  between  God's  not  mending 
men's  logic  and  rhetoric  where  't  is  defective 
and  using  such  himself;    or  between  God's 


146  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

not  contradicting  vulgar  notions  and  con- 
firming them  by  speaking  according  to  them? 
Can  infinite  wisdom  despair  of  gaining  or 
keeping  people's  affections  without  having 
recourse  to  such  mean  acts?" 

He  exposes  with  considerable  effect  the 
monstrosity  of  the  doctrine  of  exclusive 
salvation.  Must  we  not  consider,  he  asks, 
whether  one  can  be  said  to  be  sent  as  a 
Saviour  of  mankind,  if  he  comes  to  shut 
Heaven's  gate  against  those  to  whom,  before 
he  came,  it  was  open  provided  they  fol- 
lowed the  dictates  of  their  reason?  He 
criticizes  the  inconsistency  of  the  impartial 
and  universal  goodness  of  God,  known  to  us 
by  the  light  of  nature,  with  acts  committed 
by  Jehovah  or  his  prophets.  Take  the  cases 
in  which  the  order  of  nature  is  violated  to 
punish  men  for  crimes  of  which  they  were  not 
guilty,  such  as  Elijah's  hindering  rain  from 
falling  for  three  years  and  a  half.  If  God 
could  break  in  upon  the  ordinary  rules  of  his 
providence  to  punish  the  innocent  for  the 
guilty,  we  have  no  guarantee  that  if  he  deals 
thus  with  us  in  this  life,  he  will  not  act  in 
the  same  way  in  the  life  to  come,  "since  if 
the  eternal  rules  of  justice  are  once  broken 
how  can  we  imagine  any  stop?"  But  the 
ideals  of  holiness  and  justice  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament are  strange  indeed.     The  holier  men 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     147 

are  represented  to  be,  the  more  cruel  they 
seem  and  the  more  addicted  to  cursing. 
How  surprising  to  find  the  holy  prophet 
Elisha  cursing  in  the  name  of  the  Lord  little 
children  for  calling  him  Bald-pate!  And, 
what  is  still  more  surprising,  two  she- 
bears  immediately  devoured  forty-two  little 
children. 

I  have  remarked  that  theologians  at  this 
time  generally  took  the  line  of  basing  Chris- 
tianity on  reason  and  not  on  faith.  An  in- 
teresting little  book,  Christianity  not  founded 
on  Argument,  couched  in  the  form  of  a  letter 
to  a  young  gentleman  at  Oxford,  by  Henry 
Dodwell  (Junior),  appeared  in  1741,  and 
pointed  out  the  dangers  of  such  confidence 
in  reason.  It  is  an  ironical  development  of 
the  principle  of  Bayle,  working  out  the  thesis 
that  Christianity  is  essentially  unreasonable, 
and  that  if  you  want  to  believe,  reasoning  is 
fatal.  The  cultivation  of  faith  and  reasoning 
produce  contrary  effects;  the  philosopher  is 
disqualified  for  Divine  influences  by  his  very 
progress  in  carnal  wisdom;  the  Gospel  must 
be  received  with  all  the  obsequious  submis- 
sion of  a  babe  who  has  no  other  disposition 
but  to  learn  his  lesson.  Christ  did  not  pro- 
pose his  doctrines  to  investigation;  he  did 
not  lay  the  arguments  for  his  mission  before 
his  disciples  and  give  them  time  to  consider 


148  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

calmly  of  their  force,  and  liberty  to  deter- 
mine as  their  reason  should  direct  them;  the 
apostles  had  no  qualifications  for  the  task, 
being  the  most  artless  and  illiterate  persons 
living.  Dodwell  exposes  the  absurdity  of  the 
Protestant  position.  To  give  all  men  liberty 
to  judge  for  themselves  and  to  expect  at  the 
same  time  that  they  shall  be  of  the  Preacher's 
mind  is  such  a  scheme  for  unanimity  as  one 
would  scarcely  imagine  any  one  could  be  weak 
enough  to  devise  in  speculation  and  much 
less  that  any  could  ever  be  found  hardy 
enough  to  avow  and  propose  it  to  practice. 
The  men  of  Rome  "shall  rise  up  in  the  judg- 
ment (of  all  considering  persons)  against  this 
generation  and  shall  condemn  it;  for  they 
invented  but  the  one  absurdity  of  infalli- 
bility, and  behold  a  greater  absurdity  than 
infallibility  is  here." 

I  have  still  to  speak  of  the  (Third)  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury,  whose  style  has  rescued  his 
writings  from  entire  neglect.  His  special 
interest  was  ethics.  While  the  valuable 
work  of  most  of  the  heterodox  writers  of  this 
period  lay  in  their  destructive  criticism  of 
supernatural  religion,  they  clung,  as  we  have 
seen,  to  what  was  called  natural  religion — 
the  belief  in  a  kind  and  wise  personal  God, 
who  created  the  world,  governs  it  by  natural 
laws,  and  desires  our  happiness.     The  idea 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     149 

was  derived  from  ancient  philosophers  and 
had  been  revived  by  Lord  Herbert  of  Cher- 
bury  in  his  Latin  treatise  On  Truth  (in  the 
reign  of  James  I).  The  deists  contended 
that  this  was  a  sufficient  basis  for  morality 
and  that  the  Christian  inducements  to  good 
behaviour  were  unnecessary  Shaftesbury  in 
his  Inquiry  concerning  Virtue  (1699)  debated 
the  question  and  argued  that  the  scheme  of 
heaven  and  hell,  with  the  selfish  hopes  and 
fears  which  they  inspire,  corrupts  morality 
and  that  the  only  worthy  motive  for  con- 
duct is  the  beauty  of  virtue  in  itself.  He  does 
not  even  consider  deism  a  necessary  assump- 
tion for  a  moral  code;  he  admits  that  the 
opinion  of  atheists  does  not  undermine  ethics. 
But  he  thinks  that  the  belief  in  a  good 
governor  of  the  universe  is  a  powerful  sup- 
port to  the  practice  of  virtue.  He  is  a  thor- 
ough optimist,  and  is  perfectly  satisfied  with 
the  admirable  adaptation  of  means  to  ends, 
whereby  it  is  the  function  of  one  animal  to 
be  food  for  another.  He  makes  no  attempt  to 
reconcile  the  red  claws  and  teeth  of  nature 
with  the  beneficence  of  its  powerful  artist. 
"In  the  main  all  things  are  kindly  and  well 
disposed."  The  atheist  might  have  said 
that  he  preferred  to  be  at  the  mercy  of  blind 
chance  than  in  the  hands  of  an  autocrat 
who,  if  he  pleased  Lord  Shaftesbury's  sense 


150         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

of  order,  had  created  flies  to  be  devoured 
by  spiders.  But  this  was  an  aspect  of  the 
universe  which  did  not  much  trouble  thinkers 
in  the  eighteenth  century.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  character  of  the  God  of  the  Old 
Testament  roused  Shaftesbury's  aversion. 
He  attacks  Scripture  not  directly,  but  by 
allusion  or  with  irony.  He  hints  that  if 
there  is  a  God,  he  would  be  less  displeased 
with  atheists  than  with  those  who  accepted 
him  in  the  guise  of  Jehovah.  As  Plutarch 
said,  "I  had  rather  men  should  say  of  me 
that  there  neither  is  nor  ever  was  such  a  one 
as  Plutarch,  than  they  should  say  'There  was 
a  Plutarch,  an  unsteady,  changeable,  easily 
provokable  and  revengeful  man."  Shaftes- 
bury's significance  is  that  he  built  up  a  posi- 
tive theory  of  morals,  and  although  it  had 
no  philosophical  depth,  his  influence  on 
French  and  German  thinkers  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  was  immense. 

In  some  ways  perhaps  the  ablest  of  the 
deists,  and  certainly  the  most  scholarly,  was 
Rev.  Conyers  Middleton,  who  remained 
within  the  Church.  He  supported  Christi- 
anity on  grounds  of  utility.  Even  if  it  is  an 
imposture,  he  said,  it  would  be  wrong  to  de- 
stroy it.  For  it  is  established  by  law  and  it 
has  a  long  tradition  behind  it.  Some  tra- 
ditional religion  is  necessary  and  it  would 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     151 

be  hopeless  to  supplant  Christianity  by 
reason.  But  his  writings  contain  effective 
arguments  which  go  to  undermine  Revela- 
tion. The  most  important  was  his  Free  In- 
quiry into  Christian  miracles  (1748),  which 
put  in  a  new  and  dangerous  light  an  old 
question:  At  what  time  did  the  Church 
cease  to  have  the  power  of  performing 
miracles?  We  shall  see  presently  how  Gib- 
bon applied  Middleton's  method. 

The  leading  adversaries  of  the  deists  ap- 
pealed, like  them,  to  reason,  and,  in  appeal- 
ing to  reason,  did  much  to  undermine  author- 
ity. The  ablest  defence  of  the  faith,  Bishop 
Butler's  Analogy  (1736),  is  suspected  of  hav- 
ing raised  more  doubts  than  it  appeased. 
This  was  the  experience  of  William  Pitt  the 
Younger,  and  the  Analogy  made  James  Mill 
(the  utilitarian)  an  unbeliever.  The  deists 
argued  that  the  unjust  and  cruel  God  of 
Revelation  could  not  be  the  God  of  nature; 
Butler  pointed  to  nature  and  said,  There 
you  behold  cruelty  and  injustice.  The  argu- 
ment was  perfectly  good  against  the  optimism 
of  Shaftesbury,  but  it  plainly  admitted  of  the 
conclusion — opposite  to  that  which  Butler 
wished  to  establish — that  a  just  and  benefi- 
cent God  does  not  exist.  Butler  is  driven 
to  fall  back  on  the  sceptical  argument  that 
we  are  extremely  ignorant;    that  all  things 


152  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

are  possible,  even  eternal  hell  fire;  and  that 
therefore  the  safe  and  prudent  course  is  to 
accept  the  Christian  doctrine.  It  may  be 
remarked  that  this  reasoning,  with  a  few 
modifications,  could  be  used  in  favour  of  other 
religions,  at  Mecca  or  at  Timbuctoo.  He  has, 
in  effect,  revived  the  argument  used  by  Pas- 
cal that  if  there  is  one  chance  in  any  very 
large  number  that  Christianity  is  true,  it  is 
a  man's  interest  to  be  a  Christian;  for,  if  it 
prove  false,  it  will  do  him  no  harm  to  have 
believed  it;  if  it  prove  true,  he  will  be  in- 
finitely the  gainer.  Butler  seeks  indeed  to 
show  that  the  chances  in  favour  amount  to 
a  probability,  but  his  argument  is  essentially 
of  the  same  intellectual  and  moral  value  as 
Pascal's.  It  has  been  pointed  out  that  it 
leads  by  an  easy  logical  step  from  the  Angli- 
can to  the  Roman  Church.  Catholics  and 
Protestants  (as  King  Henry  IV  of  France 
argued)  agree  that  a  Catholic  may  be  saved; 
the  Catholics  assert  that  a  Protestant  will  be 
damned;  therefore  the  safe  course  is  to  em- 
brace Catholicism.1 

I  have  dwelt  at  some  length  upon  some 
of  the  English  deists,  because,  while  they 
occupy  an  important  place  in  the  history  of 

1  See  Benn,  Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  vol.  i, 
p.  138  seq.,  for  a  good  exposure  of  the  fallacies  and  sophis- 
tries of  Butler. 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     158 

rationalism  in  England,  they  also  supplied, 
along  with  Bayle,  a  great  deal  of  the  thought 
which,  manipulated  by  brilliant  writers  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Channel,  captured  the 
educated  classes  in  France.  We  are  now  in 
the  age  of  Voltaire.  He  was  a  convinced 
deist.  He  considered  that  the  nature  of  the 
universe  proved  that  it  was  made  by  a  con- 
scious architect,  he  held  that  God  was  re- 
quired in  the  interests  of  conduct,  and  he 
ardently  combated  atheism.  His  great 
achievements  were  his  efficacious  labour  in 
the  cause  of  toleration,  and  his  systematic 
warfare  against  superstitions.  He  was  pro- 
foundly influenced  by  English  thinkers,  espe- 
cially Locke  and  Bolingbroke.  This  states- 
man had  concealed  his  infidelity  during  his 
lifetime  except  from  his  intimates;  he  had 
lived  long  as  an  exile  in  France;  and  his 
rationalistic  essays  were  published  (1754) 
after  his  death.  Voltaire,  whose  literary 
genius  converted  the  work  of  the  English 
thinkers  into  a  world-force,  did  not  begin  his 
campaign  against  Christianity  till  after  the 
middle  of  the  century,  when  superstitious 
practices  and  religious  persecutions  were 
becoming  a  scandal  in  his  country.  He 
assailed  the  Catholic  Church  in  every  field 
with  ridicule  and  satire.  In  a  little  work 
called  The  Tomb  of  Fanaticism  (written  1736, 


154  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

published  1767),  he  begins  by  observing  that 
a  man  who  accepts  his  religion  (as  most 
people  do)  without  examining  it  is  like  an  ox 
which  allows  itself  to  be  harnessed,  and  pro- 
ceeds to  review  the  difficulties  in  the  Bible, 
the  rise  of  Christianity,  and  the  course  of 
Church  history;  from  which  he  concludes 
that  every  sensible  man  should  hold  the 
Christian  sect  in  horror.  "Men  are  blind  to 
prefer  an  absurd  and  sanguinary  creed,  sup- 
ported by  executioners  and  surrounded  by 
fiery  faggots,  a  creed  which  can  only  be  ap- 
proved by  those  to  whom  it  gives  power  and 
riches,  a  particular  creed  only  accepted  in  a 
small  part  of  the  world— to  a  simple  and 
universal  religion."  In  the  Sermon  of  the 
Fifty  and  the  Questions  of  Zapata  we  can  see 
what  he  owed  to  Bayle  and  English  critics, 
but  his  touch  is  lighter  and  his  irony  more 
telling.  His  comment  on  geographical  mis- 
takes in  the  Old  Testament  is:  "God  was 
evidently  not  strong  in  geography."  Having 
called  attention  to  the  "horrible  crime" 
of  Lot's  wife  in  looking  backward,  and  her 
conversion  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  he  hopes 
that  the  stories  of  Scripture  will  make  us 
better,  if  they  do  not  make  us  more  en- 
lightened. One  of  his  favourite  methods  is 
to  approach  Christian  doctrines  as  a  person 
who  had  just  heard  of  the  existence  of  Chris- 
tians or  Jews  for  the  first  time  in  his  life. 


THE  GROWTH  OP  RATIONALISM     155 

His  drama,  Saul  (1763),  which  the  police 
tried  to  suppress,  presents  the  career  of 
David,  the  man  after  God's  own  heart,  in 
all  its  naked  horror.  The  scene  in  which 
Samuel  reproves  Saul  for  not  having  slain 
Agag  will  give  an  idea  of  the  spirit  of  the 
piece. 

Samuel:  God  commands  me  to  tell  you 
that  he  repents  of  having  made  you  king. 

Saul:  God  repents!  Only  they  who  com- 
mit errors  repent.  His  eternal  wisdom  can- 
not be  unwise.     God  cannot  commit  errors. 

Samuel:  He  can  repent  of  having  set  on 
the  throne  those  who  do. 

Saul:  Well,  who  does  not?  Tell  me,  what 
is  my  fault? 

Samuel:  You  have  pardoned  a  king. 

Agag:  What!  Is  the  fairest  of  virtues 
considered  a  crime  in  Judea? 

Samuel  (to  Agag):  Silence!  do  not  blas- 
pheme. (To  Saul).  Saul,  formerly  king  of 
the  Jews,  did  not  God  command  you  by  my 
mouth  to  destroy  all  the  Amalekites,  without 
sparing  women,  or  maidens,  or  children  at  the 
breast? 

Agag:  Your  god — gave  such  a  command! 
You  are  mistaken,  you  meant  to  say,  your 
devil. 

Samuel:  Saul,  did  you  obey  God? 

Saul:   I  did  not  suppose  such  a  command 


156         FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT 

was  positive.  I  thought  that  goodness  was 
the  first  attribute  of  the  Supreme  Being,  and 
that  a  compassionate  heart  could  not  dis- 
please him. 

Samuel:  You  are  mistaken,  unbeliever. 
God  reproves  you,  your  sceptre  will  pass  into 
other  hands. 

Perhaps  no  writer  has  ever  roused  more 
hatred  in  Christendom  than  Voltaire.  He 
was  looked  on  as  a  sort  of  anti-Christ.  That 
was  natural;  his  attacks  were  so  tremen- 
dously effective  at  the  time.  But  he  has 
been  sometimes  decried  on  the  ground  that  he 
only  demolished  and  made  no  effort  to  build 
up  where  he  had  pulled  down.  This  is  a 
narrow  complaint.  It  might  be  replied  that 
when  a  sewer  is  spreading  plague  in  a  town, 
we  cannot  wait  to  remove  it  till  we  have  a 
new  system  of  drains,  and  it  may  fairly  be 
said  that  religion  as  practised  in  contempo- 
rary France  was  a  poisonous  sewer.  But  the 
true  answer  is  that  knowledge,  and  therefore 
civilization,  are  advanced  by  criticism  and 
negation,  as  well  as  by  construction  and  posi- 
tive discovery.  When  a  man  has  the  talent 
to  attack  with  effect  falsehood,  prejudice,  and 
imposture,  it  is  his  duty,  if  there  are  any 
social  duties,  to  use  it. 

For  constructive  thinking  we  must  go  to 
the  other  great  leader  of  French  thought, 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     157 

Rousseau,  who  contributed  to  the  growth  of 
freedom  in  a  different  way.  He  was  a  deist, 
but  his  deism,  unlike  that  of  Voltaire,  was 
religious  and  emotional.  He  regarded  Chris- 
tianity with  a  sort  of  reverent  scepticism. 
But  his  thought  was  revolutionary  and  repug- 
nant to  orthodoxy;  it  made  against  author- 
ity in  every  sphere;  and  it  had  an  enormous 
influence.  The  clergy  perhaps  dreaded  his 
theories  more  than  the  scoffs  and  negations 
of  Voltaire.  For  some  years  he  was  a  fugitive 
on  the  face  of  the  earth.  Emile,  his  brilliant 
contribution  to  the  theory  of  education, 
appeared  in  1762.  It  contains  some  remark- 
able pages  on  religion,  "the  profession  of 
faith  of  a  Savoyard  vicar,"  in  which  the 
author's  deistic  faith  is  strongly  affirmed  and 
revelation  and  theology  rejected.  The  book 
was  publicly  burned  in  Paris  and  an  order 
issued  for  Rousseau's  arrest.  Forced  by  his 
friends  to  flee,  he  was  debarred  from  return- 
ing to  Geneva,  for  the  government  of  that 
canton  followed  the  example  of  Paris.  He 
sought  refuge  in  the  canton  of  Bern  and  was 
ordered  to  quit.  He  then  fled  to  the  prin- 
cipality of  Neufchatel  which  belonged  to 
Prussia.  Frederick  the  Great,  the  one  really 
tolerant  ruler  of  the  age,  gave  him  protection, 
but  he  was  persecuted  and  calumniated  by 
the  local  clergy,  who  but  for  Frederick  would 


158  FREEDOxM  OF  THOUGHT 

have  expelled  him,  and  he  went  to  England 
for  a  few  months  (1766),  then  returning  to 
France,  where  he  was  left  unmolested  till 
his  death.  The  religious  views  of  Rousseau 
are  only  a  minor  point  in  his  heretical  specu- 
lations. It  was  by  his  daring  social  and 
political  theories  that  he  set  the  world  on 
fire.  His  Social  Contract  in  which  these 
theories  were  set  forth  was  burned  at  Geneva. 
Though  his  principles  will  not  stand  criticism 
for  a  moment,  and  though  his  doctrine  worked 
mischief  by  its  extraordinary  power  of  turning 
men  into  fanatics,  yet  it  contributed  to  prog- 
ress, by  helping  to  discredit  privilege  and  to 
establish  the  view  that  the  object  of  a  State 
is  to  secure  the  wellbeing  of  all  its  members. 

Deism — whether  in  the  semi-Christian 
form  of  Rousseau  or  the  anti-Christian  form 
of  Voltaire — was  a  house  built  on  the  sand, 
and  thinkers  arose  in  France,  England,  and 
Germany  to  shatter  its  foundations.  In 
France,  it  proved  to  be  only  a  half-way  inn 
to  atheism.  In  1770,  French  readers  were 
startled  by  the  appearance  of  Baron  D'Hol- 
bach's  System  of  Nature,  in  which  God's  exist- 
ence and  the  immortality  of  the  soul  were 
denied  and  the  world  declared  to  be  matter 
spontaneously  moving. 

Holbach  was  a  friend  of  Diderot,  who  had 
also  come  to  reject  deism.     All  the  leading 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     159 

ideas  in  the  revolt  against  the  Church  had  a 
place  in  Diderot's  great  work,  the  Encyclo- 
paedia, in  which  a  number  of  leading  thinkers 
collaborated  with  him.  It  was  not  merely  a 
scientific  book  of  reference.  It  was  repre- 
sentative of  the  whole  movement  of  the 
enemies  of  faith.  It  was  intended  to  lead 
men  from  Christianity  with  its  original  sin  to 
a  new  conception  of  the  world  as  a  place 
which  can  be  made  agreeable  and  in  which 
the  actual  evils  are  due  not  to  radical  faults 
of  human  nature  but  to  perverse  institutions 
and  perverse  education.  To  divert  interest 
from  the  dogmas  of  religion  to  the  improve- 
ment of  society,  to  persuade  the  world  that 
man's  felicity  depends  not  on  Revelation 
but  on  social  transformation — this  was  what 
Diderot  and  Rousseau  in  their  different  way3 
did  so  much  to  effect.  And  their  work  influ- 
enced those  who  did  not  abandon  orthodoxy; 
it  affected  the  spirit  of  the  Church  itself. 
Contrast  the  Catholic  Church  in  France  in 
the  eighteenth  and  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Without  the  work  of  Voltaire,  Rous- 
seau, Diderot,  and  their  fellow-combatants, 
wrould  it  have  been  reformed?  "The  Chris- 
tian Churches"  (I  quote  Lord  Morley)  "are 
assimilating  as  rapidly  as  their  formulae  will 
permit,  the  new  light  and  the  more  generous 
moral    ideas  and  the   higher  spirituality  of 


160         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

teachers  who  have  abandoned  all  churches 
and  who  are  systematically  denounced  as 
enemies  of  the  souls  of  men." 

In  England  the  prevalent  deistic  thought 
did  not  lead  to  the  same  intellectual  conse- 
quences as  in  France;  yet  Hume,  the  greatest 
English  philosopher  of  the  century,  showed 
that  the  arguments  commonly  adduced  for  a 
personal  God  were  untenable.  I  may  first 
speak  of  his  discussion  on  miracles  in  his 
Essay  on  Miracles  and  in  his  philosophical 
Inquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding 
(1748).  Hitherto  the  credibility  of  miracles 
had  not  been  submitted  to  a  general  examina- 
tion independent  of  theological  assumptions. 
Hume,  pointing  out  that  there  must  be  a 
uniform  experience  against  every  miraculous 
event  (otherwise  it  would  not  merit  the  name 
of  miracle),  and  that  it  will  require  stronger 
testimony  to  establish  a  miracle  than  an  event 
which  is  not  contrary  to  experience,  lays  down 
the  general  maxim  that  "no  testimony  is 
sufficient  to  establish  a  miracle  unless  the 
testimony  is  of  such  a  kind  that  its  falsehood 
would  be  more  miraculous  than  the  fact  which 
it  endeavours  to  establish."  But,  as  a  matter 
of  fact,  no  testimony  exists  of  which  the  false- 
hood would  be  a  prodigy.  We  cannot  find 
in  history  any  miracle  attested  by  a  sufficient 
number  of  men  of  such  unquestionable  good 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     161 

sense,  education,  and  learning,  as  to  secure  us 
against  all  delusion  in  themselves;  of  such 
undoubted  integrity  as  to  place  them  beyond 
all  suspicion  of  any  design  to  deceive  others; 
of  such  credit  in  the  eyes  of  mankind  as  to 
have  a  great  deal  to  lose  in  case  of  their  being 
detected  in  any  falsehood,  and  at  the  same 
time  attesting  facts  performed  in  such  a  public 
manner  as  to  render  detection  unavoidable 
— all  which  circumstances  are  requisite  to 
give  us  a  full  assurance  in  the  testimony  of 
men. 

In  the  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion  which 
were  not  published  till  after  his  death  (1776), 
Hume  made  an  attack  on  the  "argument 
from  design,"  on  which  deists  and  Christians 
alike  relied  to  prove  the  existence  of  a  Deity. 
The  argument  is  that  the  world  presents  clear 
marks  of  design,  endless  adaptation  of  means 
to  ends,  which  can  only  be  explained  as  due 
to  the  deliberate  plan  of  a  powerful  intelli- 
gence. Hume  disputes  the  inference  on  the 
ground  that  a  mere  intelligent  being  is  not  a 
sufficient  cause  to  explain  the  effect.  For  the 
argument  must  be  that  the  system  of  the 
material  world  demands  as  a  cause  a  corre- 
sponding system  of  interconnected  ideas;  but 
such  a  mental  system  would  demand  an  ex- 
planation of  its  existence  just  as  much  as  the 
material  world;   and  thus  we  find  ourselves 


162  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

committed  to  an  endless  series  of  causes. 
But  in  any  case,  even  if  the  argument  held, 
it  would  prove  only  the  existence  of  a  Deity 
whose  powers,  though  superior  to  man's, 
might  be  very  limited  and  whose  workman- 
ship might  be  very  imperfect.  For  this  world 
may  be  very  faulty,  compared  to  a  superior 
standard.  It  may  be  the  first  rude  experi- 
ment "of  some  infant  Deity  who  afterwards 
abandoned  it,  ashamed  of  his  lame  perform- 
ance"; or  the  work  of  some  inferior  Deity  at 
which  his  superior  would  scoff;  or  the  pro- 
duction of  some  old  superannuated  Deity 
which  since  his  death  has  pursued  an  adven- 
turous career  from  the  first  impulse  which  he 
gave  it.  An  argument  which  leaves  such 
deities  in  the  running  is  worse  than  useless 
for  the  purposes  of  Deism  or  of  Christianity. 
The  sceptical  philosophy  of  Hume  had  less 
influence  on  the  general  public  than  Gibbon's 
Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Of 
the  numerous  freethinking  books  that  ap- 
peared in  England  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
this  is  the  only  one  which  is  still  a  widely 
read  classic.  In  what  a  lady  friend  of  Dr. 
Johnson  called  "the  two  offensive  chapters" 
(XV  and  XVI)  the  causes  of  the  rise  and  suc- 
cess of  Christianity  are  for  the  first  time 
critically  investigated  as  a  simple  historical 
phenomenon.     Like  most  freethinkers  of  the 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     163 

time  Gibbon  thought  it  well  to  protect  him- 
self and  his  work  against  the  possibility  of 
prosecution  by  paying  ironical  lip-homage 
to  the  orthodox  creed.  But  even  if  there  had 
been  no  such  danger,  he  could  not  have  chosen 
a  more  incisive  weapon  for  his  merciless 
criticism  of  orthodox  opinion  than  the  irony 
which  he  wielded  with  superb  ease.  Having 
pointed  out  that  the  victory  of  Christianity 
is  obviously  and  satisfactorily  explained  by 
the  convincing  evidence  of  the  doctrine  and 
by  the  ruling  providence  of  its  great  Author, 
he  proceeds  "with  becoming  submission"  to 
inquire  into  the  secondary  causes.  He  traces 
the  history  of  the  faith  up  to  the  time  of 
Constantine  in  such  a  way  as  clearly  to  sug- 
gest that  the  hypothesis  of  divine  interpo- 
sition is  superfluous  and  that  we  have  to 
do  with  a  purely  human  development.  He 
marshals,  with  ironical  protests,  the  obvious 
objections  to  the  alleged  evidence  for  super- 
natural control.  He  does  not  himself  criti- 
cize Moses  and  the  prophets,  but  he  repro- 
duces the  objections  which  were  made  against 
their  authority  by  "the  vain  science  of  the 
gnostics."  He  notes  that  the  doctrine  of 
immortality  is  omitted  in  the  law  of  Moses, 
but  this  doubtless  was  a  mysterious  dispensa- 
tion of  Providence.  We  cannot  entirely  re- 
move   "the    imputation    of    iguorance    and 


164  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

obscurity  which  has  been  so  arrogantly  cast 
on  the  first  proselytes  of  Christianity,"  but 
we  must  "convert  the  occasion  of  scandal  into 
a  subject  of  edification"  and  remember  that 
"the  lower  we  depress  the  temporal  condition 
of  the  first  Christians,  the  more  reason  we 
shall  find  to  admire  their  merit  and  success." 
Gibbon's  treatment  of  miracles  from  the 
purely  historical  point  of  view  (he  owed  a 
great  deal  to  Middleton,  see  above,  p.  150) 
was  particularly  disconcerting.     In  the  early 
age  of  Christianity  "the  laws  of  nature  were 
frequently  suspended  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Church.     But  the  sages  of  Greece  and  Rome 
turned  aside  from  the  awful  spectacle,  and, 
pursuing  the  ordinary  occupations  of  life  and 
study,  appeared  unconscious  of  any  altera- 
tions in  the  moral  or  physical  government  of 
the  world.     Under  the  reign  of  Tiberius  the 
whole  earth,  or  at  least  a  celebrated  province 
of  the  Roman  Empire,  was  involved  in  a 
praeternatural    darkness    of    three    hours. 
Even  this  miraculous  event,  which  ought  to 
have  excited  the  wonder,  the  curiosity,  and 
the  devotion   of  mankind,   passed   without 
notice  in  an  age  of  science  and  history.     It 
happened  during  the  lifetime  of  Seneca  and 
the  elder  Pliny,  who  must  have  experienced 
the  immediate  effects,  or  received  the  earliest 
intelligence,  of  the  prodigy.     Each  of  thc^c 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     165 

philosophers  in  a  laborious  work  has  recorded 
all  the  great  phenomena  of  nature,  earth- 
quakes, meteors,  comets,  and  eclipses,  which 
his  indefatigable  curiosity  could  collect. 
Both  the  one  and  the  other  have  omitted  to 
mention  the  greatest  phenomenon  to  which 
the  mortal  eye  has  been  witness  since  the 
creation  of  the  globe."  How  "shall  we  ex- 
cuse the  supine  inattention  of  the  pagan  and 
philosophic  world  to  those  evidences  which 
were  presented  by  the  hand  of  Omnipotence, 
not  to  their  reason,  but  to  their  senses?" 

Again,  if  every  believer  is  convinced  of  the 
reality  of  miracles,  every  reasonable  man  is 
convinced  of  their  cessation.  Yet  every  age 
bears  testimony  to  miracles,  and  the  testi- 
mony seems  no  less  respectable  than  that  of 
the  preceding  generation.  When  did  they 
cease?  How  was  it  that  the  generation 
which  saw  the  last  genuine  miracles  per- 
formed could  not  distinguish  them  from  the 
impostures  which  followed?  Had  men  so 
soon  forgotten  "the  style  of  the  divine 
artist"?  The  inference  is  that  genuine  and 
spurious  miracles  are  indistinguishable.  But 
the  credulity  or  "softness  of  temper"  among 
early  believers  was  beneficial  to  the  cause  of 
truth  and  religion.  "In  modern  times,  a 
latent  and  even  involuntary  scepticism  ad- 
heres to  the  most  pious  dispositions.     Their 


166  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

admission  of  supernatural  truths  is  much  less 
an  active  consent  than  a  cold  and  passive 
acquiescence.  Accustomed  long  since  to  ob- 
serve and  to  respect  the  invariable  order  of 
nature,  our  reason,  or  at  least  our  imagina- 
tion, is  not  sufficiently  prepared  to  sustain 
the  visible  action  of  the  Deity." 

Gibbon  had  not  the  advantage  of  the 
minute  critical  labours  which  in  the  following 
century  were  expended  on  his  sources  of 
information,  but  his  masterly  exposure  of  the 
conventional  history  of  the  early  Church 
remains  in  many  of  its  most  important  points 
perfectly  valid  to-day.  I  suspect  that  his 
artillery  has  produced  more  effect  on  intel- 
ligent minds  in  subsequent  generations  than 
the  archery  of  Voltaire.  For  his  book  became 
indispensable  as  the  great  history  of  the 
Middle  Ages;  the  most  orthodox  could  not 
do  without  it;  and  the  poison  must  have 
often  worked. 

We  have  seen  how  theological  controversy 
in  the  first  half  of  the  eighteenth  century  had 
turned  on  the  question  whether  the  revealed 
religion  was  consistent  and  compatible  with 
natural  religion.  The  deistic  attacks,  on  this 
line,  were  almost  exhausted  by  the  middle  of 
the  century,  and  the  orthodox  thought  that 
they  had  been  satisfactorily  answered.  But 
it  was  not  enough  to  show  that  the  revelation 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     167 

is  reasonable;  it  was  necessary  to  prove  that 
it  is  real  and  rests  on  a  solid  historical  basis. 
This  was  the  question  raised  in  an  acute  form 
by  the  criticisms  of  Hume  and  Middleton 
(1748)  on  miracles.  The  ablest  answer  was 
given  by  Paley  in  his  Evidences  of  Chris- 
tianity (1794),  the  only  one  of  the  apologies 
of  that  age  which  is  still  read,  though  it  has 
ceased  to  have  any  value.  Paley 's  theology 
illustrates  how  orthodox  opinions  are  col- 
oured, unconsciously,  by  the  spirit  of  the  time. 
He  proved  (in  his  Natural  Theology)  the  ex- 
istence of  God  by  the  argument  from  design 
— without  taking  any  account  of  the  criti- 
cisms of  Hume  on  that  argument.  Just  as 
a  watchmaker  is  inferred  from  a  watch,  so 
a  divine  workman  is  inferred  from  contriv- 
ances in  nature.  Paley  takes  his  instances 
of  such  contrivance  largely  from  the  organs 
and  constitution  of  the  human  bodv.  His 
idea  of  God  is  that  of  an  ingenious  contriver 
dealing  with  rather  obstinate  material. 
Paley 's  "God"  (Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  re- 
marked) "has  been  civilized  like  man;  he  has 
become  scientific  and  ingenious;  he  is  su- 
perior to  Watt  or  Priestley  in  devising  me- 
chanical and  chemical  contrivances,  and  is 
therefore  made  in  the  image  of  that  genera- 
tion of  which  Watt  and  Priestley  were  con- 
spicuous lights."     When  a  God  of  this  kind 


168  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

is  established  there  is  no  difficulty  about 
miracles,  and  it  is  on  miracles  that  Paley 
bases  the  case  for  Christianity — all  other  ar- 
guments are  subsidiary.  And  his  proof  of 
the  New  Testament  miracles  is  that  the  apos- 
tles who  were  eye-witnesses  believed  in  them, 
for  otherwise  they  would  not  have  acted  and 
suffered  in  the  cause  of  their  new  religion. 
Paley 's  defence  is  the  performance  of  an  able 
legal  adviser  to  the  Almighty. 

The  list  of  the  English  deistic  writers  of 
the  eighteenth  century  closes  with  one  whose 
name  is  more  familiar  than  any  of  his  pre- 
decessors, Thomas  Paine.  A  Norfolk  man, 
he  migrated  to  America  and  played  a  leading 
part  in  the  Revolution.  Then  he  returned  to 
England  and  in  1791  published  his  Rights 
of  Man  in  two  parts.  I  have  been  consider- 
ing, almost  exclusively,  freedom  of  thought 
in  religion,  because  it  may  be  taken  as  the 
thermometer  for  freedom  of  thought  in  gen- 
eral. At  this  period  it  was  as  dangerous 
to  publish  revolutionary  opinions  in  politics 
as  in  theology.  Paine  was  an  enthusiastic 
admirer  of  the  American  Constitution  and  a 
supporter  of  the  French  Revolution  (in  which 
also  he  was  to  play  a  part).  His  Rights  of 
Man  is  an  indictment  of  the  monarchical 
form  of  government,  and  a  plea  for  repre- 
sentative democracy.     It  had  an  enormous 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     169 

sale,  a  cheap  edition  was  issued,  and  the 
government,  finding  that  it  was  accessible 
to  the  poorer  classes,  decided  to  prosecute. 
Paine  escaped  to  France,  and  received  a  bril- 
liant ovation  at  Calais,  which  returned  him 
as  deputy  to  the  National  Convention.  His 
trial  for  high  treason  came  on  at  the  end  of 
1792.  Among  the  passages  in  his  book,  on 
which  the  charge  was  founded,  were  these: 
"All  hereditary  government  is  in  its  nature 
tyranny."  "The  time  is  not  very  distant 
when  England  will  laugh  at  itself  for  sending 
to  Holland,  Hanover,  Zell,  or  Brunswick 
for  men"  [meaning  King  William  III  and 
King  George  I]  "at  the  expense  of  a  million 
a  year  who  understood  neither  her  laws,  her 
language,  nor  her  interest,  and  whose  capaci- 
ties would  scarcely  have  fitted  them  for  the 
office  of  a  parish  constable.  If  government 
could  be  trusted  to  such  hands,  it  must  be 
some  easy  and  simple  thing  indeed,  and 
materials  fit  for  all  the  purposes  may  be 
found  in  every  town  and  village  in  England." 
Erskine  was  Paine's  counsel,  and  he  made  a 
fine  oration  in  defence  of  freedom  of  speech. 
"Constraint,"  he  said,  "is  the  natural 
parent  of  resistance,  and  a  pregnant  proof 
that  reason  is  not  on  the  side  of  those  who 
use  it.  You  must  all  remember,  gentlemen, 
Lucian's  pleasant  story:  Jupiter  andacoun- 


170  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

try  man  were  walking  together,  conversing 
with  great  freedom  and  familiarity  upon 
the  subject  of  heaven  and  earth.  The 
countryman  listened  with  attention  and 
acquiescence  while  Jupiter  strove  only  to 
convince  him;  but  happening  to  hint  a 
doubt,  Jupiter  turned  nastily  around  and 
threatened  him  with  his  thunder.  'Ah,  ha!' 
says  the  countryman,  'now,  Jupiter,  I  know 
that  you  are  wrong;  you  are  always  wrong 
when  you  appeal  to  your  thunder.'  This  is 
the  case  with  me.  I  can  reason  with  the 
people  of  England,  but  I  cannot  fight  against 
the  thunder  of  authority." 

Paine  was  found  guilty  and  outlawed.  He 
soon  committed  a  new  offence  by  the  publica- 
tion of  an  anti-Christian  work,  The  Age  of 
Reason  (1794  and  1796),  which  he  began  to 
write  in  the  Paris  prison  into  which  he  had 
been  thrown  by  Robespierre.  This  book  is 
remarkable  as  the  first  important  English 
publication  in  which  the  Christian  scheme  of 
salvation  and  the  Bible  are  assailed  in  plain 
language  without  any  disguise  or  reserve.  In 
the  second  place  it  was  written  in  such  a  way 
as  to  reach  the  masses.  And,  thirdly,  while 
the  criticisms  on  the  Bible  are  in  the  same 
vein  as  those  of  the  earlier  deists,  Paine  is  the 
first  to  present  with  force  the  incongruity  of 
the  Christian  scheme  with  the  conception  of 
the  universe  attained  by  astronomical  science. 


THE  GROWTH  OP  RATIONALISM     171 

'Though  it  is  not  a  direct  article  of  the 
Christian  system  that  this  world  that  we 
inhabit  is  the  whole  of  the  inhabitable  globe, 
yet  it  is  so  worked  up  therewith — from  what 
is  called  the  Mosaic  account  of  the  creation, 
the  story  of  Eve  and  the  apple,  and  the 
counterpart  of  that  story,  the  death  of  the 
Son  of  God — that  to  believe  otherwise  (that 
is,  to  believe  that  God  created  a  plurality  of 
worlds  at  least  as  numerous  as  what  we  call 
stars)  renders  the  Christian  system  of  faith 
at  once  little  and  ridiculous,  and  scatters  it 
in  the  mind  like  feathers  in  the  air.  The  two 
beliefs  cannot  be  held  together  in  the  same 
mind;  and  he  who  thinks  that  he  believes 
both  has  thought  but  little  of  either." 

As  an  ardent  deist,  who  regarded  nature 
as  God's  revelation,  Paine  was  able  to  press 
this  argument  with  particular  force.  Refer- 
ring to  some  of  the  tales  in  the  Old  Testament, 
he  says:  'When  we  contemplate  the  immen- 
sity of  that  Being  who  directs  and  governs 
the  incomprehensible  Whole,  of  which  the 
utmost  ken  of  human  sight  can  discover  but 
a  part,  we  ought  to  feel  shame  at  calling  such 
paltry  stories  the  Word  of  God." 

The  book  drew  a  reply  from  Bishop  Wat- 
son, one  of  those  admirable  eighteenth- 
century  divines,  who  admitted  the  right  of 
private  judgment  and  thought  that  argument 


172  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

should  be  met  by  argument  and  not  by  force. 
His  reply  had  the  rather  significant  title, 
An  Apology  for  the  Bible.  George  III  re- 
marked that  he  was  not  aware  that  any  apol- 
ogy was  needed  for  that  book.  It  is  a  weak 
defence,  but  is  remarkable  for  the  concessions 
which  it  makes  to  several  of  Paine's  criti- 
cisms of  Scripture — admissions  which  were 
calculated  to  damage  the  doctrine  of  the  in- 
fallibility of  the  Bible. 

It  was  doubtless  in  consequence  of  the 
enormous  circulation  of  the  Age  of  Reason 
that  a  Society  for  the  Suppression  of  Vice 
decided  to  prosecute  the  publisher.  Un- 
belief was  common  among  the  ruling  class, 
but  the  view  was  firmly  held  that  religion 
was  necessary  for  the  populace  and  that  any 
attempt  to  disseminate  unbelief  among  the 
lower  classes  must  be  suppressed.  Religion 
was  regarded  as  a  valuable  instrument  to  keep 
the  poor  in  order.  It  is  notable  that  of  the 
earlier  rationalists  (apart  from  the  case  of 
Woolston)  the  only  one  who  was  punished 
was  Peter  Annet,  a  schoolmaster,  who  tried 
to  popularize  freethought  and  was  sentenced 
for  diffusing  "diabolical"  opinions  to  the 
pillory  and  hard  labour  (1763).  Paine  held 
that  the  people  at  large  had  the  right  of  access 
to  all  new  ideas,  and  he  wrote  so  as  to  reach 
the  people.     Hence  his  book  must  be  sup- 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     173 

pressed.  At  the  trial  (1797)  the  judge  placed 
every  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  defence. 
The  publisher  was  sentenced  to  a  year's 
imprisonment. 

This  was  not  the  end  of  Paine  prosecutions. 
In  1811  a  Third  Part  of  the  Age  of  Reason 
appeared,  and  Eaton  the  publisher  was 
condemned  to  eighteen  months'  imprison- 
ment and  to  stand  in  the  pillory  once  a  month. 
The  judge,  Lord  Ellenborough,  said  in  his 
charge,  that  "to  deny  the  truths  of  the  book 
which  is  the  foundation  of  our  faith  has  never 
been  permitted."  The  poet  Shelley  ad- 
dressed to  Lord  Ellenborough  a  scathing 
letter.  "Do  you  think  to  convert  Mr. 
Eaton  to  your  religion  by  embittering  his 
existence?  You  might  force  him  by  torture 
to  profess  your  tenets,  but  he  could  not 
believe  them  except  you  should  make  them 
credible,  which  perhaps  exceeds  your  power. 
Do  you  think  to  please  the  God  you  worship 
by  this  exhibition  of  your  zeal?  If  so,  the 
demon  to  whom  some  nations  offer  human 
hecatombs  is  less  barbarous  than  the  deity 
of  civilized  society!"  In  1819  Richard  Car- 
lisle was  prosecuted  for  publishing  the  Age  of 
Reason  and  sentenced  to  a  large  fine  and  three 
years'  imprisonment.  Unable  to  pay  the 
fine  he  was  kept  in  prison  for  three  years. 
His  wife  and  sister,  who  carried  on  the  busi- 


174  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

ness  and  continued  to  sell  the  book,  were 
fined  and  imprisoned  soon  afterwards  and  a 
whole  host  of  shop  assistants. 

If  his  publishers  suffered  in  England,  the 
author  himself  suffered  in  America  where 
bigotry  did  all  it  could  to  make  the  last  years 
of  his  life  bitter. 

The  age  of  enlightenment  began  in  Ger- 
many in  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. In  most  of  the  German  States,  thought 
was  considerably  less  free  than  in  England. 
Under  Frederick  the  Great's  father,  the  phi- 
lospher  Wolff  was  banished  from  Prussia  for 
according  to  the  moral  teachings  of  the 
Chinese  sage  Confucius  a  praise  which,  it  was 
thought,  ought  to  be  reserved  for  Christi- 
anity. He  returned  after  the  accession  of 
Frederick,  under  whose  tolerant  rule  Prussia 
was  an  asylum  for  those  writers  who  suffered 
for  their  opinions  in  neighbouring  States. 
Frederick,  indeed,  held  the  view  which  was 
held  by  so  many  English  rationalists  of  the 
time,  and  is  still  held  widely  enough,  that 
freethought  is  not  desirable  for  the  multi- 
tude, because  they  are  incapable  of  under- 
standing philosophy.  Germany  felt  the 
influence  of  the  English  Deists,  of  the  French 
freethinkers,  and  of  Spinoza;  but  in  the 
German  rationalistic  propaganda  of  this 
period  there  is  nothing  very  original  or  in- 


THE  GROWTH  OF  RATIONALISM     175 

t cresting.  The  names  of  Edelmann  and 
Bahrdt  may  be  mentioned.  The  works  of 
Edelmann,  who  attacked  the  inspiration  of 
the  Bible,  were  burned  in  various  cities,  and 
he  was  forced  to  seek  Frederick's  protection 
at  Berlin.  Bahrdt  was  more  aggressive  than 
any  other  writer  of  the  time.  Originally 
a  preacher,  it  was  by  slow  degrees  that  he 
moved  away  from  the  orthodox  faith.  His 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  cut  short 
his  ecclesiastical  career.  His  last  years  were 
spent  as  an  inn-keeper.  His  writings,  for 
instance  his  popular  Letters  on  the  Bible,  must 
have  had  a  considerable  effect,  if  we  may 
judge  by  the  hatred  which  he  excited  among 
theologians. 

It  was  not,  however,  in  direct  rationalistic 
propaganda,  but  in  literature  and  philoso- 
phy, that  the  German  enlightenment  of  this 
century  expressed  itself.  The  most  illus- 
trious men  of  letters,  Goethe  (who  was  pro- 
foundly influenced  by  Spinoza)  and  Schiller, 
stood  outside  the  Churches,  and  the  effect 
of  their  writings  and  of  the  whole  literary 
movement  of  the  time  made  for  the  freest 
treatment  of  human  experience. 

One  German  thinker  shook  the  world — the 
philosopher  Kant.  His  Critic  of  Pure  Reason 
demonstrated  that  when  we  attempt  to  prove 
by  the  light  of  the  intellect  the  existence  of 


176  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

God  and  the  immortality  of  the  Soul,  we  fall 
helplessly  into  contradictions.  His  destruc- 
tive criticism  of  the  argument  from  design 
smd  all  natural  theology  was  more  complete 
than  that  of  Hume;  and  his  philosophy, 
different  though  his  system  was,  issued  in  the 
same  practical  result  as  that  of  Locke,  to 
confine  knowledge  to  experience.  It  is  true 
that  afterwards,  in  the  interest  of  ethics,  he 
tried  to  smuggle  in  by  a  back-door  the  Deity 
whom  he  had  turned  out  by  the  front  gate, 
but  the  attempt  was  not  a  success.  His 
philosophy — while  it  led  to  new  speculative 
systems  in  which  the  name  of  God  was  used 
to  mean  something  very  different  from  the 
Deistic  conception — was  a  significant  step 
further  in  the  deliverance  of  reason  from  the 
yoke  of  authority. 

CHAPTER  VII 

the  progress  of  rationalism 

(nineteenth  century) 

Modern  science,  heralded  by  the  re- 
searches of  Copernicus,  was  founded  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  which  saw  the  demon- 
stration of  the  Copernican  theory,  the  dis- 
covery of  gravitation,  the  discovery  of  the 
circulation  of  the  blood,  and  the  foundation 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      177 

of  modern  chemistry  and  physics.  The  true 
nature  of  comets  was  ascertained,  and  they 
ceased  to  be  regarded  as  signs  of  heavenly 
wrath.  But  several  generations  were  to 
pass  before  science  became,  in  Protestant 
countries,  an  involuntary  arch-enemy  of 
theology.  Till  the  nineteenth  century,  it 
was  only  in  minor  points,  such  as  the  move- 
ment of  the  earth,  that  proved  scientific 
facts  seemed  to  conflict  with  Scripture,  and 
it  was  easy  enough  to  explain  away  these 
inconsistencies  by  a  new  interpretation  of 
the  sacred  texts.  Yet  remarkable  facts 
were  accumulating  which,  though  not  ex- 
plained by  science,  seemed  to  menace  the 
credibility  of  Biblical  history.  If  the  story 
of  Noah's  Ark  and  the  Flood  is  true,  how  was 
it  that  beasts  unable  to  swim  or  fly  inhabit 
America  and  the  islands  of  the  Ocean?  And 
what  about  the  new  species  which  were 
constantly  being  found  in  the  New  World 
and  did  not  exist  in  the  Old?  Where  did 
the  kangaroos  of  Australia  drop  from?  The 
only  explanation  compatible  with  received 
theology  seemed  to  be  the  hypothesis  of  in- 
numerable new  acts  of  creation,  later  than 
the  Flood.  It  was  in  the  field  of  natural 
history  that  scientific  men  of  the  eighteenth 
century  suffered  most  from  the  coercion  of 
authority.     Linnaeus  felt  it  in  Sweden,  Buffon 


178  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

in  France.  Buff  on  was  compelled  to  retract 
hypotheses  which  he  put  forward  about  the 
formation  of  the  earth  in  his  Natural  History 
(1749),  and  to  state  that  he  believed  implicitly 
in  the  Bible  account  of  Creation. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century 
Laplace  worked  out  the  mechanics  of  the 
universe,  on  the  nebular  hypothesis.  His 
results  dispensed,  as  he  said  to  Napoleon, 
with  the  hypothesis  of  God,  and  were  duly 
denounced.  His  theory  involved  a  long 
physical  process  before  the  earth  and  solar 
system  came  to  be  formed;  but  this  was  not 
fatal,  for  a  little  ingenuity  might  preserve 
the  credit  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis. 
Geology  was  to  prove  a  more  formidable 
enemy  to  the  Biblical  story  of  the  Creation 
and  the  Deluge.  The  theory  of  a  French 
naturalist  (Cuvier)  that  the  earth  had  re- 
peatedly experienced  catastrophes,  each  of 
which  necessitated  a  new  creative  act,  helped 
for  a  time  to  save  the  belief  in  divine  in- 
tervention, and  Lyell,  in  his  Principles  of 
Geology  (1830),  while  he  undermined  the  as- 
sumption of  catastrophes,  by  showing  that 
the  earth's  history  could  be  explained  by  the 
ordinary  processes  which  we  still  see  in  op- 
eration, yet  held  fast  to  successive  acts  of 
creation.  It  was  not  till  1863  that  he  pre- 
sented fully,  in  his  Antiquity  of  Man,  the 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      179 

evidence  which  showed  that  the  human  race 
had  inhabited  the  earth  for  a  far  longer  period 
than  could  be  reconciled  with  the  record  of 
Scripture.     That  record  might  be  adapted 
to  the  results  of  science  in  regard  not  only  to 
the  earth  itself  but  also  to  the  plants  and 
lower  animals,  by  explaining  the  word  "day" 
in  the  Jewish  story  of  creation  to  signify 
some  long  period  of  time.     But  this  way  out 
was  impossible  in  the  case  of  the  creation  of 
man,    for    the    sacred    chronology    is    quite 
definite.     An  English  divine  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  ingeniously  calculated  that 
man  was  created  by  the  Trinity  on  October 
23,  b.c.  4004,  at  9  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and 
no  reckoning  of  the  Bible  dates  could  put  the 
event  much  further  back.     Other  evidence 
reinforced  the  conclusions  from  geology,  but 
geology  alone  was  sufficient  to  damage  ir- 
retrievably the  historical  truth  of  the  Jewish 
legend  of  Creation.     The  only  means  of  res- 
cuing it  was  to  suppose  that  God  had  created 
misleading  evidence  for  the  express  purpose  of 
deceiving  man. 

Geology  shook  the  infallibility  of  the  Bible, 
but  left  the  creation  of  some  prehistoric  Adam 
and  Eve  a  still  admissible  hypothesis.  Here 
however  zoology  stepped  in,  and  pronounced 
upon  the  origin  of  man.  It  was  an  old  con- 
jecture that  the  higher  forms  of  life,  including 


180  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

man,  had  developed  out  of  lower  forms,  and 
advanced    thinkers   had   been    reaching   the 
conclusion  that  the  universe,  as  we  find  it, 
is   the   result  of   a  continuous   process,  un- 
broken   by    supernatural    interference,    and 
explicable    by    uniform    natural    laws.     But 
while  the  reign  of  law  in  the  world  of  non- 
living matter  seemed  to  be  established,  the 
world  of  life  could  be  considered  a  field  in 
which  the  theory  of  divine  intervention  is 
perfectly  valid,  so  long  as  science  failed  to 
assign  satisfactory  causes  for  the  origination 
of  the  various  kinds  of  animals  and  plants. 
The  publication  of  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species 
in  1859  is,  therefore,  a  landmark  not  only  in 
science  but  in  the  war  between  science  and 
theology.     When  this  book  appeared,  Bishop 
Wilberforce   truly  said   that   "the  principle 
of  natural  selection  is  incompatible  with  the 
word  of  God,"  and  theologians  in  Germany 
and  France  as  well  as  in  England  cried  aloud 
against  the  threatened  dethronement  of  the 
Deity.     The   appearance   of   the  Descent  of 
Man  (1871),  in  which  the  evidence  for  the 
pedigree    of    the    human    race    from    lower 
animals  was  marshalled  with  masterly  force, 
renewed   the   outcry.     The  Bible   said  that 
God  created  man  in  his  own  image,  Darwin 
said    that    man    descended    from    an    ape. 
The  feelings  of  the  orthodox  world  may  be 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      181 

expressed  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Gladstone: 
"Upon  the  grounds  of  what  is  called  evo- 
lution God  is  relieved  of  the  labour  of  cre- 
ation, and  in  the  name  of  unchangeable  laws 
is  discharged  from  governing  the  world." 
It  was  a  discharge  which,  as  Spencer  observed, 
had  begun  with  Newton's  discovery  of  gravita- 
tion. If  Darwin  did  not,  as  is  now  recognized, 
supply  a  complete  explanation  of  the  origin 
of  species,  his  researches  shattered  the  su- 
pernatural theory  and  confirmed  the  view  to 
which  many  able  thinkers  had  been  led  that 
development  is  continuous  in  the  living  as 
in  the  non-living  world.  Another  nail  was 
driven  into  the  coffin  of  Creation  and  the  Fall 
of  Adam,  and  the  doctrine  of  redemption 
could  only  be  rescued  by  making  it  inde- 
pendent of  the  Jewish  fable  on  which  it  was 
founded. 

Darwinism,  as  it  is  called,  has  had  the  larger 
effect  of  discrediting  the  theory  of  the  adapta- 
tion of  means  to  ends  in  nature  by  an  external 
and  infinitely  powerful  intelligence.  The  in- 
adequacy of  the  argument  from  design,  as  a 
proof  of  God's  existence,  had  been  shown  by 
the  logic  of  Hume  and  Kant;  but  the  observa- 
tion of  the  life-processes  of  nature  shows  that 
the  very  analogy  between  nature  and  art,  on 
which  the  argument  depends,  breaks  down. 
The  impropriety  of  the  analogy  has  been 


182  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

pointed  out,  in  a  telling  way,  by  a  German 
writer  (Lange).  If  a  man  wants  to  shoot  a 
hare  which  is  in  a  certain  field,  he  does  not 
procure  thousands  of  guns,  surround  the 
field,  and  cause  them  all  to  be  fired  off;  or 
if  he  wants  a  house  to  live  in,  he  does  not 
build  a  whole  town  and  abandon  to  weather 
and  decay  all  the  houses  but  one.  If  he  did 
either  of  these  things  we  should  say  he  was 
mad  or  amazingly  unintelligent;  his  actions 
certainly  would  not  be  held  to  indicate  a 
powerful  mind,  expert  in  adapting  means  to 
ends.  But  these  are  the  sort  of  things  that 
nature  does.  Her  wastefulness  in  the  propa- 
gation of  life  is  reckless.  For  the  production 
of  one  life  she  sacrifices  innumerable  germs. 
The  "end"  is  achieved  in  one  case  out  of 
thousands;  the  rule  is  destruction  and  failure. 
If  intelligence  had  anything  to  do  with  this 
bungling  process,  it  would  be  an  intelligence 
infinitely  low.  And  the  finished  product, 
if  regarded  as  a  work  of  design,  points  to 
incompetence  in  the  designer.  Take  the 
human  eye.  An  illustrious  man  of  science 
(Helmholtz)  said,  "If  an  optician  sent  it  to 
me  as  an  instrument,  I  should  send  it  back 
with  reproaches  for  the  carelessness  of  his 
work  and  demand  the  return  of  my  money." 
Darwin  showed  how  the  phenomena  might 
be  explained  as  events  not  brought  about 


Progress  of  rationalism    iss 

intentionally,   but  due  to  exceptional  con- 
currences of  circumstances. 

The  phenomena  of  nature  are  a  system  of 
things  which  co-exist  and  follow  each  other 
according  to  invariable  laws.  This  deadly 
proposition  was  asserted  early  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  to  be  an  axiom  of  science. 
It  was  formulated  by  Mill  (in  his  System  of 
Logic,  1843)  as  the  foundation  on  which 
scientific  induction  rests.  It  means  that  at 
anv  moment  the  state  of  the  whole  universe 
is  the  effect  of  its  state  at  the  preceding 
moment;  the  casual  sequence  between  two 
successive  states  is  not  broken  by  any  arbi- 
trary interference  suppressing  or  altering  the 
relation  between  cause  and  effect.  Some  an- 
cient Greek  philosophers  were  convinced 
of  this  principle;  the  work  done  by  modern 
science  in  every  field  seems  to  be  a  verification 
of  it.  But  it  need  not  be  stated  in  such  an 
absolute  form.  Recently,  scientific  men  have 
been  inclined  to  express  the  axiom  with  more 
reserve  and  less  dogmatically.  They  are 
prepared  to  recognize  that  it  is  simply  a  pos- 
tulate without  which  the  scientific  compre- 
hension of  the  universe  would  be  impossible, 
and  they  are  inclined  to  state  it  not  as  a 
law  of  causation — for  the  idea  of  causation 
leads  into  metaphysics — but  rather  as  uni- 
formity  of   experience.     But   they   are   not 


184  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

readier  to  admit  exceptions  to  this  uniformity 
than  their  predecessors  were  to  admit  excep- 
tions to  the  law  of  causation. 

The  idea  of  development  has  been  applied 
not  only  to  nature,  but  to  the  mind  of  man 
and  to  the  history  of  civilization,  including 
thought  and  religion.  The  first  who  attempted 
to  apply  this  idea  methodically  to  the  whole 
universe  was  not  a  student  of  natural  science, 
but  a  metaphysician,  Hegel.  His  extremely 
difficult  philosophy  had  such  a  wide  influence 
on  thought  that  a  few  words  must  be  said 
about  its  tendency.  He  conceived  the  whole 
of  existence  as  what  he  called  the  Absolute 
Idea,  which  is  not  in  space  or  time  and  is  com- 
pelled by  the  laws  of  its  being  to  manifest 
itself  in  the  process  of  the  world,  first  exter- 
nalizing itself  in  nature,  and  then  becoming 
conscious  of  itself  as  spirit  in  individual 
minds.  His  system  is  hence  called  Absolute 
Idealism.  The  attraction  which  it  exercised 
has  probably  been  in  great  measure  due  to 
the  fact  that  it  was  in  harmony  with  nine- 
teenth-century thought,  in  so  far  as  it  con- 
ceived the  process  of  the  world,  both  in  na- 
ture and  spirit,  as  a  necessary  development 
from  lower  to  higher  stages.  In  this  respect 
indeed  Hegel's  vision  was  limited.  He  treats 
the  process  as  if  it  were  practically  complete 
already,   and   does   not   take   into   account 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      185 

the  probability  of  further  development  in 
the  future,  to  which  other  thinkers  of  his 
own  time  were  turning  their  attention.  But 
what  concerns  us  here  is  that,  while  Hegel's 
system  is  "idealistic,"  finding  the  explanation 
of  the  universe  in  thought  and  not  in  matter, 
it  tended  as  powerfully  as  any  materialistic 
system  to  subvert  orthodox  beliefs.  It  is 
true  that  some  have  claimed  it  as  supporting 
Christianity.  A  certain  colour  is  lent  to  this 
by  Hegel's  view  that  the  Christian  creed,  as 
the  highest  religion,  contains  doctrines  which 
express  imperfectly  some  of  the  ideas  of  the 
highest  philosophy — his  own;  along  with  the 
fact  that  he  sometimes  speaks  of  the  Absolute 
Idea  as  if  it  were  a  person,  though  personality 
would  be  a  limitation  inconsistent  with  his 
conception  of  it.  But  it  is  sufficient  to  observe 
that,  whatever  value  be  assigned  to  Christi- 
anity, he  regarded  it  from  the  superior  stand- 
point of  a  purely  intellectual  philosophy,  not 
as  a  special  revelation  of  truth,  but  as  a 
certain  approximation  to  the  truth  which 
philosophy  alone  can  reach;  and  it  may  be 
said  with  some  confidence  that  any  one  who 
comes  under  Hegel's  spell  feels  that  he  is  in 
possession  of  a  theory  of  the  universe  which 
relieves  him  from  the  need  or  desire  of  any 
revealed  religion.  His  influence  in  Germany, 
Russia,  and  elsewhere  has  entirely  made  for 
highly  unorthodox  thought. 


186  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Hegel  was  not  aggressive,  he  was  superior. 
His  French  contemporary,  Comte,  who  also 
thought  out  a  comprehensive  system,  aggres- 
sively and  explicitly  rejected  theology  as  an 
obsolete  way  of  explaining  the  universe.  He 
rejected  metaphysics  likewise,  and  all  that 
Hegel  stood  for,  as  equally  useless,  on  the 
ground  that  metaphysicians  explain  nothing, 
but  merely  describe  phenomena  in  abstract 
terms,  and  that  questions  about  the  origin  of 
the  world  and  why  it  exists  are  quite  beyond 
the  reach  of  reason.  Both  theology  and 
metaphysics  are  superseded  by  science — the 
investigation  of  causes  and  effects  and  co- 
existences; and  the  future  progress  of  society 
will  be  guided  by  the  scientific  view  of  the 
world  which  confines  itself  to  the  positive 
data  of  experience.  Comte  was  convinced 
that  religion  is  a  social  necessity,  and,  to 
supply  the  place  of  the  theological  religions 
which  he  pronounced  to  be  doomed,  he  in- 
vented a  new  religion — the  religion  of  Human- 
ity. It  differs  from  the  great  religions  of  the 
world  in  having  no  supernatural  or  non- 
rational  articles  of  belief,  and  on  that  account 
he  had  few  adherents.  But  the  "Positive 
Philosophy"  of  Comte  has  exercised  great 
influence,  not  least  in  England,  where  its 
principles  have  been  promulgated  especially 
by  Mr.  Frederic  Harrison,  who  in  the  latter 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      187 

half  of  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  one 
of  the  most  indefatigable  workers  in  the 
cause  of  reason  against  authority. 

Another  comprehensive  system  was  worked 
out  by  an  Englishman,  Herbert  Spencer.  Like 
Comte's,  it  was  based  on  science,  and  attempts 
to  show  how,  starting  with  a  nebular  universe, 
the  whole  knowable  world,  psychical  and 
social  as  well  as  physical,  can  be  deduced. 
His  Synthetic  Philosophy  perhaps  did  more 
than  anything  else  to  make  the  idea  of 
evolution  familiar  in  England. 

I  must  mention  one  other  modern  explana- 
tion of  the  world,  that  of  Haeckel,  the  zoolo- 
gist, professor  at  Jena,  who  may  be  called 
the  prophet  of  evolution.  His  Creation  of 
Man  (1868)  covered  the  same  ground  as 
Darwin's  Descent,  had  an  enormous  circula- 
tion, and  was  translated,  I  believe,  into 
fourteen  languages.  His  World-riddles  (1899) 
enjoys  the  same  popularity.  He  has  taught, 
like  Spencer,  that  the  principle  of  evolution 
applies  not  only  to  the  history  of  nature,  but 
also  to  human  civilization  and  human  thought. 
He  differs  from  Spencer  and  Comte  in  not 
assuming  any  unknowable  reality  behind 
natural  phenomena.  His  adversaries  com- 
monly stigmatize  his  theory  as  materialism, 
but  this  is  a  mistake.  Like  Spinoza  he  recog- 
nizes matter  and  mind,  body  and  thought,  as 


188  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

two  inseparable  sides  of  ultimate  reality, 
which  he  calls  God;  in  fact,  he  identifies  his 
philosophy  with  that  of  Spinoza.  And  he 
logically  proceeds  to  conceive  material  atoms 
as  thinking.  His  idea  of  the  physical  world 
is  based  on  the  old  mechanical  conception 
of  matter,  which  in  recent  years  has  been 
discredited.  But  Haeckel's  Monism,1  as  he 
called  his  doctrine,  has  lately  been  reshaped 
and  in  its  new  form  promises  to  exercise  wide 
influence  on  thoughtful  people  in  Germany. 
I  will  return  later  to  this  Monistic  movement. 
It  had  been  a  fundamental  principle  of 
Comte  that  human  actions  and  human  history 
are  as  strictly  subject  as  nature  is,  to  the  law 
of  causation.  Two  psychological  works  ap- 
peared in  England  in  1855  (Bain's  Senses  and 
Intellect  and  Spencer's  Principles  of  Psychol- 
ogy), which  taught  that  our  volitions  are 
completely  determined,  being  the  inevitable 
consequences  of  chains  of  causes  and  effects. 
But  a  far  deeper  impression  was  produced 
two  years  later  by  the  first  volume  of  Buckle's 
History  of  Civilization  in  England  (a  work  of 
much  less  permanent  value),  which  attempted 
to  apply  this  principle  to  history.  Men  act  in 
consequence  of  motives;  their  motives  are 
the  results  of  preceding  facts;  so  that  "if  we 
were  acquainted  with  the  whole  of  the  ante- 

1  From  Greek  monoa,  alone. 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      189 

cedents  and  with  all  the  laws  of  their  move- 
ments, we  could  with  unerring  certainty 
predict  the  whole  of  their  immediate  results." 
Thus  history  is  an  unbroken  chain  of  causes 
and  effects.  Chance  is  excluded ;  it  is  a  mere 
name  for  the  defects  of  our  knowledge. 
Mysterious  and  providential  interference  is 
excluded.  Buckle  maintained  God's  exist- 
ence, but  eliminated  him  from  history;  and 
his  book  dealt  a  resounding  blow  at  the  theory 
that  human  actions  are  not  submitted  to  the 
law  of  universal  causation. 

The  science  of  anthropology  has  in  recent 
years  aroused  wide  interest.  Inquiries  into 
the  condition  of  early  man  have  shown 
(independently  of  Darwinism)  that  there  is 
nothing  to  be  said  for  the  view  that  he  fell 
from  a  higher  to  a  lower  state;  the  evidence 
points  to  a  slow  rise  from  mere  animality. 
The  origin  of  religious  beliefs  has  been  inves- 
tigated, with  results  disquieting  for  orthodoxy. 
The  researches  of  students  of  anthropology 
and  comparative  religion — such  as  Tylor, 
Robertson  Smith,  and  Frazer — have  gone 
to  show  that  mysterious  ideas  and  dogma 
and  rites  which  were  held  to  be  peculiar  to 
the  Christian  revelation  are  derived  from 
the  crude  ideas  of  primitive  religions.  That 
the  mystery  of  the  Eucharist  comes  from  the 
common  savage  rite  of  eating  a  dead  god, 


190  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

that  the  death  and  resurrection  of  a  god  in 
human  form,  which  form  the  central  fact  of 
Christianity,  and  the  miraculous  birth  of  a 
Saviour  are  features  which  it  has  in  common 
with  pagan  religions — such  conclusions  are 
supremely  unedifying.  It  may  be  said  that 
in  themselves  they  are  not  fatal  to  the  claims 
of  the  current  theology.  It  may  be  held,  for 
instance,  that,  as  part  of  Christian  revelation, 
such  ideas  acquired  a  new  significance  and 
that  God  wisely  availed  himself  of  familiar 
beliefs — which,  though  false  and  leading  to 
cruel  practices,  he  himself  had  inspired  and 
permitted — in  order  to  construct  a  scheme 
of  redemption  which  should  appeal  to  the 
prejudices  of  man.  Some  minds  may  find 
satisfaction  in  this  sort  of  explanation,  but 
it  may  be  suspected  that  most  of  the  few 
who  study  modern  researches  into  the  origin 
of  religious  beliefs  will  feel  the  lines  which 
were  supposed  to  mark  off  the  Christian  from 
all  other  faiths  dissolving  before  their  eyes. 

The  general  result  of  the  advance  of  science, 
including  anthropology,  has  been  to  create 
a  coherent  view  of  the  world,  in  which  the 
Christian  scheme,  based  on  the  notions  of 
an  unscientific  age  and  on  the  arrogant 
assumption  that  the  universe  was  made  for 
man,  has  no  suitable  or  reasonable  place.  If 
Paine  felt  this  a  hundred  years  ago,  it  is  far 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      191 

more  apparent  now.  All  minds  however  are 
not  equally  impressed  with  this  incongruity. 
There  are  many  who  will  admit  the  proofs 
furnished  by  science  that  the  Biblical  record 
as  to  the  antiquity  of  man  is  false,  but  are 
not  affected  by  the  incongruity  between  the 
scientific  and  theological  conceptions  of  the 
world. 

For  such  minds  science  has  only  succeeded 
in  carrying  some  entrenchments,  which  may 
be  abandoned  without  much  harm.  It  has 
made  the  old  orthodox  view  of  the  infallibility 
of  the  Bible  untenable,  and  upset  the  doctrine 
of  the  Creation  and  Fall.  But  it  would  still 
be  possible  for  Christianity  to  maintain  the 
supernatural  claim,  by  modifying  its  theory 
of  the  authority  of  the  Bible  and  revising  its 
theory  of  redemption,  if  the  evidence  of 
natural  science  were  the  only  group  of  facts 
with  which  it  collided.  It  might  be  argued 
that  the  law  of  universal  causation  is  a  hy- 
pothesis inferred  from  experience,  but  that 
experience  includes  the  testimonies  of  history 
and  must  therefore  take  account  of  the  clear 
evidence  of  miraculous  occurrences  in  the 
New  Testament  (evidence  which  is  valid, 
even  if  that  book  was  not  inspired).  Thus, 
a  stand  could  be  taken  against  the  generaliza- 
tion of  science  on  the  firm  ground  of  historical 
fact.    That  solid  ground,  however,  has  given 


192  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

way,  undermined  by  historical  criticism, 
which  has  been  more  deadly  than  the  com- 
mon-sense criticism  of  the  eighteenth  century. 

The  methodical  examination  of  the  records 
contained  in  the  Bible,  dealing  with  them 
as  if  they  were  purely  human  documents,  is 
the  work  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Some- 
thing, indeed,  had  already  been  done.  Spi- 
noza, for  instance  (above,  p.  138),  and  Simon, 
a  Frenchman  whose  books  were  burnt,  were 
pioneers;  and  the  modern  criticism  of  the 
Old  Testament  was  begun  by  Astruc  (pro- 
fessor of  medicine  at  Paris),  who  discovered 
an  important  clue  for  distinguishing  different 
documents  used  by  the  compiler  of  the  Book 
of  Genesis  (1753).  His  German  contempo- 
rary, Reimarus,  a  student  of  the  New  Tes- 
tament, anticipated  the  modern  conclusion 
that  Jesus  had  no  intention  of  founding  a  new 
religion,  and  saw  that  the  Gospel  of  St.  John 
presents  a  different  figure  from  the  Jesus  of 
the  other  evangelists. 

But  in  the  nineteenth  century  the  methods 
of  criticism,  applied  by  German  scholars  to 
Homer  and  to  the  records  of  early  Roman 
history,  were  extended  to  the  investigation 
of  the  Bible.  The  work  has  been  done 
principally  in  Germany.  The  old  tradition 
that  the  Pentateuch  was  written  by  Moses 
has  been  completely  discredited.     It  is  now 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      193 

agreed  unanimously  by  all  who  have  studied 
the  facts  that  the  Pentateuch  was  put  to- 
gether from  a  number  of  different  documents 
of  different  ages,  the  earliest  dating  from  the 
ninth,  the  last  from  the  fifth,  century  B.C.; 
and  there  are  later  minor  additions.  An 
important,  though  undesigned,  contribution 
was  made  to  this  exposure  by  an  English- 
man, Colenso,  Bishop  of  Natal.  It  had  been 
held  that  the  oldest  of  the  documents  which 
had  been  distinguished  was  a  narrative  which 
begins  in  Genesis,  Chapter  I,  but  there  was 
the  difficulty  that  this  narrative  seemed  to 
be  closely  associated  with  the  legislation  of 
Leviticus  which  could  be  proved  to  belong  to 
the  fifth  century.  In  1862  Colenso  published 
the  first  part  of  his  Pentateuch  and  the  Book 
of  Joshua  Critically  Examined.  His  doubts 
of  the  truth  of  Old  Testament  history  had 
been  awakened  by  a  converted  Zulu  who 
asked  the  intelligent  question  whether  he 
could  really  believe  in  the  story  of  the  Flood, 
"that  all  the  beasts  and  birds  and  creeping 
things  upon  the  earth,  large  and  small,  from 
hot  countries  and  cold,  came  thus  by  pairs 
and  entered  into  the  ark  with  Noah?  And 
did  Noah  gather  food  for  them  all,  for  the 
beasts  and  birds  of  prey  as  well  as  the  rest?" 
The  Bishop  then  proceeded  to  test  the  ac- 
curacy of  the  inspired  books  by  examining 


194  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

the  numerical  statements  which  they  contain. 
The  results  were  fatal  to  them  as  historical 
records.  Quite  apart  from  miracles  (the 
possibility  of  which  he  did  not  question),  he 
showed  that  the  whole  story  of  the  sojourn 
of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt  and  the  wilderness 
was  full  of  absurdities  and  impossibilities. 
Colenso's  book  raised  a  storm  of  indignation 
in  England — he  was  known  as  "the  wicked 
bishop";  but  on  the  Continent  its  reception 
was  very  different.  The  portions  of  the 
Pentateuch  and  Joshua,  which  he  proved  to 
be  unhistorical,  belonged  precisely  to  the 
narrative  which  had  caused  perplexity;  and 
critics  were  led  by  his  results  to  conclude  that, 
like  the  Levitical  laws  with  which  it  was 
connected,  it  was  as  late  as  the  fifth  century. 
One  of  the  most  striking  results  of  the 
researches  on  the  Old  Testament  has  been 
that  the  Jews  themselves  handled  their 
traditions  freely.  Each  of  the  successive 
documents,  which  were  afterwards  woven 
together,  was  written  by  men  who  adopted 
a  perfectly  free  attitude  towards  the  older 
traditions,  and  having  no  suspicion  that  they 
were  of  divine  origin  did  not  bow  down 
before  their  authority.  It  was  reserved  for 
the  Christians  to  invest  with  infallible  au- 
thority the  whole  indiscriminate  lump  of 
these    Jewish    documents,    inconsistent    not 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      195 

only  in  their  tendencies  (since  they  reflect 
the  spirit  of  different  ages),  but  also  in  some 
respects  in  substance.  The  examination  of 
most  of  the  other  Old  Testament  books  has 
led  to  conclusions  likewise  adverse  to  the 
orthodox  view  of  their  origin  and  character. 
New  knowledge  on  many  points  has  been 
derived  from  the  Babylonian  literature  which 
has  been  recovered  during  the  last  half 
century.  One  of  the  earliest  (1872)  and 
most  sensational  discoveries  was  that  the 
Jews  got  their  story  of  the  Flood  from 
Babylonian  mythology. 

Modern  criticism  of  the  New  Testament 
began  with  the  stimulating  works  of  Baur 
and  of  Strauss,  whose  Life  of  Jesus  (1835), 
in  which  the  supernatural  was  entirely 
rejected,  had  an  immense  success  and  caused 
furious  controversy.  Both  these  rationalists 
were  influenced  by  Hegel.  At  the  same  time 
a  classical  scholar,  Lachmann,  laid  the  foun- 
dations of  the  criticism  of  the  Greek  text 
of  the  New  Testament,  by  issuing  the  first 
scientific  edition.  Since  then  seventy  years 
of  work  have  led  to  some  certain  results  which 
are  generally  accepted. 

In  the  first  place,  no  intelligent  person  who 
has  studied  modern  criticism  holds  the  old 
view  that  each  of  the  four  biographies  of 
Jesus  is  an  independent  work  and  an  in- 


196  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

dependent  testimony  to  the  facts  which  are 
related.  It  is  acknowledged  that  those  por- 
tions which  are  common  to  more  than  one 
and  are  written  in  identical  language  have  the 
same  origin  and  represent  only  one  testimony. 
In  the  second  place,  it  is  allowed  that  the 
first  Gospel  is  not  the  oldest  and  that  the 
apostle  Matthew  was  not  its  author.  There 
is  also  a  pretty  general  agreement  that  Mark's 
book  is  the  oldest.  The  authorship  of  the 
fourth  Gospel,  which  like  the  first  was  sup- 
posed to  have  been  written  by  an  eye-witness, 
is  still  contested,  but  even  those  who  adhere 
to  the  tradition  admit  that  it  represents  a 
theory  about  Jesus  which  is  widely  different 
from  the  view  of  the  three  other  biographers. 
The  result  is  that  it  can  no  longer  be  said 
that  for  the  life  of  Jesus  there  is  the  evidence 
of  eye-witnesses.  The  oldest  account  (Mark) 
was  composed  at  the  earliest  some  thirty  years 
after  the  Crucifixion.  If  such  evidence  is 
considered  good  enough  to  establish  the 
supernatural  events  described  in  that  docu- 
ment, there  are  few  alleged  supernatural 
occurrences  which  we  shall  not  be  equally 
entitled  to  believe.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  an  in- 
terval of  thirty  years  makes  little  difference, 
for  we  know  that  legends  require  little  time 
to  grow.  In  the  East,  you  will  hear  of 
miracles    which    happened    the    day    before 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      197 

yesterday.  The  birth  of  religions  is  always 
enveloped  in  legend,  and  the  miraculous 
thing  would  be,  as  M.  Salomon  Reinach  has 
observed,  if  the  story  of  the  birth  of  Christi- 
anity were  pure  history. 

Another  disturbing  result  of  unprejudiced 
examination  of  the  first  three  Gospels  is  that, 
if  you  take  the  recorded  words  of  Jesus  to  be 
genuine  tradition,  he  had  no  idea  of  founding 
a  new  religion.  And  he  was  fully  persuaded 
that  the  end  of  the  world  was  at  hand.  At 
present,  the  chief  problem  of  advanced  criti- 
cism seems  to  be  whether  his  entire  teach- 
ing was  not  determined  by  this  delusive 
conviction. 

It  may  be  said  that  the  advance  of  knowl- 
edge has  thrown  no  light  on  one  of  the  most 
important  beliefs  that  we  are  asked  to  accept 
on  authority,  the  doctrine  of  immortality. 
Physiology  and  psychology  have  indeed 
emphasized  the  difficulties  of  conceiving  a 
thinking  mind  without  a  nervous  system. 
Some  are  sanguine  enough  to  think  that,  by 
scientific  examination  of  psychical  phenom- 
ena, we  may  possibly  come  to  know  whether 
the  "spirits"  of  dead  people  exist.  If  the 
existence  of  such  a  world  of  spirits  were  ever 
established,  it  would  possibly  be  the  greatest 
blow  ever  sustained  by  Christianity.  For  the 
great  appeal  of  this  and  of  some  other  re- 


198         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

ligions  lies  in  the  promise  of  a  future  life  of 
which  otherwise  we  should  have  no  knowl- 
edge. If  existence  after  death  were  proved 
and  became  a  scientific  fact  like  the  law  of 
gravitation,  a  revealed  religion  might  lose 
its  power.  For  the  whole  point  of  a  re- 
vealed religion  is  that  it  is  not  based  on  scien- 
tific facts.  So  far  as  I  know,  those  who  are 
convinced,  by  spiritualistic  experiments,  that 
they  have  actual  converse  with  spirits  of  the 
dead,  and  for  whom  this  converse,  however 
delusive  the  evidence  may  be,  is  a  fact  proved 
by  experience*  cease  to  feel  any  interest  in 
religion.  They  possess  knowledge  and  can 
dispense  with  faith. 

The  havoc  which  science  and  historical 
criticism  have  wrought  among  orthodox 
beliefs  during  the  last  hundred  years  was 
not  tamely  submitted  to,  and  controversy 
was  not  the  only  weapon  employed.  Strauss 
was  deprived  of  his  professorship  at  Tubingen, 
and  his  career  was  ruined.  Renan,  whose 
sensational  Life  of  Jesus  also  rejected  the 
supernatural,  lost  his  chair  in  the  College  de 
France.  Biichner  was  driven  from  Tubingen 
(1855)  for  his  book  on  Force  and  Matter, 
which,  appealing  to  the  general  public,  set 
forth  the  futility  of  supernatural  explanations 
of  the  universe.  An  attempt  was  made  to 
chase  Haeckel  from  Jena.     In  recent  years, 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      190 

a  French  Catholic,  the  Abbe  Loisy,  has  made 
notable  contributions  to  the  study  of  the 
New  Testament  and  he  was  rewarded  by 
major  excommunication  in  1907. 

Loisy  is  the  most  prominent  figure  in  a 
growing  movement  within  the  Catholic 
Church  known  as  Modernism — a  movement 
which  some  think  is  the  gravest  crisis  in  the 
history  of  the  Church  since  the  thirteenth 
century.  The  Modernists  do  not  form  an 
organized  party;  they  have  no  programme. 
They  are  devoted  to  the  Church,  to  its  tra- 
ditions and  associations,  but  they  look  on 
Christianity  as  a  religion  which  has  devel- 
oped, and  whose  vitality  depends  upon  its 
continuing  to  develop.  They  are  bent  on 
reinterpreting  the  dogmas  in  the  light  of 
modern  science  and  criticism.  The  idea  of 
development  had  already  been  applied  by 
Cardinal  Newman  to  Catholic  theology.  He 
taught  that  it  was  a  natural,  and  therefore 
legitimate,  development  of  the  primitive 
creed.  But  he  did  not  draw  the  conclusion 
which  the  Modernists  draw  that  if  Catholi- 
cism is  not  to  lose  its  power  of  growth  and 
die,  it  must  assimilate  some  of  the  results 
of  modern  thought.  This  is  what  they  are 
attempting  to  do  for  it. 

Pope  Pius  X  has  made  every  effort  to 
suppress  the  Modernists.     In  1907  (July)  he 


200  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

issued  a  decree  denouncing  various  results  of 
modern  Biblical  criticism  which  are  defended 
in  Loisy's  works.  The  two  fundamental 
propositions  that  "the  organic  constitution 
of  the  Church  is  not  immutable,  but  that 
Christian  society  is  subject,  like  every  human 
society,  to  a  perpetual  evolution,"  and  that 
"the  dogmas  which  the  Church  regards  as 
revealed  are  not  fallen  from  heaven  but  are 
an  interpretation  of  religious  facts  at  which 
the  human  mind  laboriously  arrived" — both 
of  which  might  be  deduced  from  Newman's 
writings — are  condemned.  Three  months 
later  the  Pope  issued  a  long  Encyclical  letter, 
containing  an  elaborate  study  of  Modernist 
opinions,  and  ordaining  various  measures  for 
stamping  out  the  evil.  No  Modernist  would 
admit  that  this  document  represents  his 
views  fairly.  Yet  some  of  the  remarks  seem 
very  much  to  the  point.  Take  one  of  their 
books:  "one  page  might  be  signed  by  a 
Catholic;  turn  over  and  you  think  you  are 
reading  the  work  of  a  rationalist.  In  writing 
history,  they  make  no  mention  of  Christ's 
divinity;  in  the  pulpit,  they  proclaim  it 
loudly." 

A  plain  man  may  be  puzzled  by  these 
attempts  to  retain  the  letter  of  old  dogmas 
emptied  of  their  old  meaning,  and  may  think 
it  natural  enough  that  the  head  of  the  Catho- 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      201 

lie  Church  should  take  a  clear  and  definite 
stand  against  the  new  learning  which  seems 
fatal  to  its  fundamental  doctrines.  For 
many  years  past,  liberal  divines  in  the  Prot- 
estant Churches  have  been  doing  what  the 
Modernists  are  doing.  The  phrase  "Divin- 
ity of  Christ"  is  used,  but  is  interpreted 
so  as  not  to  imply  a  miraculous  birth.  The 
Resurrection  is  preached,  but  is  interpreted 
so  as  not  to  imply  a  miraculous  bodily  resur- 
rection. The  Bible  is  said  to  be  an  inspired 
book,  but  inspiration  is  used  in  a  vague  sense, 
much  as  when  one  says  that  Plato  was  in- 
spired; and  the  vagueness  of  this  new  idea 
of  inspiration  is  even  put  forward  as  a  merit. 
Between  the  extreme  views  which  discard 
the  miraculous  altogether,  and  the  old 
orthodoxy,  there  are  many  gradations  of 
belief.  In  the  Church  of  England  to-day  it 
would  be  difficult  to  say  what  is  the  minimum 
belief  required  either  from  its  members  or 
from  its  clergy.  Probably  every  leading  ec- 
clesiastic would  give  a  different  answer. 

The  rise  of  rationalism  within  the  English 
Church  is  interesting  and  illustrates  the 
relations  between  Church  and  State. 

The  pietistic  movement  known  as  Evan- 
gelicalism, which  Wilberforce's  Practical  View 
of  Christianity  (1797)  did  much  to  make  pop- 
ular,   introduced    the   spirit   of   Methodism 


202  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

within  the  Anglican  Church,  and  soon  put 
an  end  to  the  delightful  type  of  eighteenth- 
century  divine,  who,  as  Gibbon  says,  "sub- 
scribed with  a  sigh  or  a  smile"  the  articles  of 
faith.  The  rigorous  taboo  of  the  Sabbath 
was  revived,  the  theatre  was  denounced, 
the  corruption  of  human  nature  became  the 
dominant  theme,  and  the  Bible  more  a  fetish 
than  ever.  The  success  of  this  religious 
"reaction,"  as  it  is  called,  was  aided,  though 
not  caused,  by  the  common  belief  that  the 
French  Revolution  had  been  mainly  due  to 
infidelity;  the  Revolution  was  taken  for  an 
object  lesson  showing  the  value  of  religion 
for  keeping  the  people  in  order.  There 
was  also  a  religious  "reaction"  in  France 
itself.  But  in  both  cases  this  means  not 
that  free  thought  was  less  prevalent,  but 
that  the  beliefs  of  the  majority  were  more 
aggressive  and  had  powerful  spokesmen, 
while  the  eighteenth-century  form  of  rational- 
ism fell  out  of  fashion.  A  new  form  of  ration- 
alism, which  sought  to  interpret  orthodoxy 
in  such  a  liberal  way  as  to  reconcile  it  with 
philosophy,  was  represented  by  Coleridge, 
who  was  influenced  by  German  philosophers. 
Coleridge  was  a  supporter  of  the  Church, 
and  he  contributed  to  the  foundation  of  a 
school  of  liberal  theology  which  was  to  make 
itself  felt  after  the  middle  of  the  century. 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      203 

Newman,  the  most  eminent  of  the  new  High 
Church  party,  said  that  he  indulged  in  a 
liberty  of  speculation  which  no  Christian 
could  tolerate.  The  High  Church  movement 
which  marked  the  second  quarter  of  the  cen- 
tury was  as  hostile  as  Evangelicalism  to  the 
freedom  of  religious  thought. 

The  change  came  after  the  middle  of  the 
century,  when  the  effects  of  the  philosophies 
of  Hegel  and  Comte,  and  of  foreign  Biblical 
criticism,  began  to  make  themselves  felt 
within  the  English  Church.  Two  remarkable 
freethinking  books  appeared  at  this  period 
which  were  widely  read,  F.  W.  Newman's 
Phases  of  Faith  and  W.  R.  Greg's  Creed 
of  Christendom  (both  in  1850).  Newman 
(brother  of  Cardinal  Newman)  entirely  broke 
with  Christianity,  and  in  his  book  he  describes 
the  mental  process  by  which  he  came  to 
abandon  the  beliefs  he  had  once  held.  Per- 
haps the  most  interesting  point  he  makes  is 
the  deficiency  of  the  New  Testament  teaching 
as  a  system  of  morals.  Greg  was  a  Unitarian. 
He  rejected  dogma  and  inspiration,  but  he 
regarded  himself  as  a  Christian.  Sir  J.  F. 
Stephen  wittily  described  his  position  as  that 
of  a  disciple  "who  had  heard  the  Sermon  on 
the  Mount,  whose  attention  had  not  been 
called  to  the  Miracles,  and  who  died  before 
the  Resurrection." 


204  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

There  were  a  few  English  clergymen 
(chiefly  Oxford  men)  who  were  interested  in 
German  criticism  and  leaned  to  broad  views, 
which  to  the  Evangelicals  and  High  Church- 
men seemed  indistinguishable  from  infidelity. 
We  may  call  them  the  Broad  Church — though 
the  name  did  not  come  in  till  later.  In  1855 
Jowett  (afterwards  Master  of  Balliol)  pub- 
lished an  edition  of  some  of  St.  Paul's  Epistles, 
in  which  he  showed  the  cloven  hoof.  It 
contained  an  annihilating  criticism  of  the 
doctrine  of  the  Atonement,  an  explicit  re- 
jection of  original  sin,  and  a  rationalistic 
discussion  of  the  question  of  God's  existence. 
But  this  and  some  other  unorthodox  works 
of  liberal  theologians  attracted  little  public 
attention,  though  their  authors  had  to  endure 
petty  persecution.  Five  years  later,  Jowett 
and  some  other  members  of  the  small  liberal 
group  decided  to  defy  the  "abominable 
system  of  terrorism  which  prevents  the 
statement  of  the  plainest  fact,"  and  issued 
a  volume  of  Essays  and  Reviews  (1860)  by 
seven  writers  of  whom  six  were  clergymen. 
The  views  advocated  in  these  essays  seem 
mild  enough  to-day,  and  many  of  them 
would  be  accepted  by  most  well-educated 
clergymen,  but  at  the  time  they  produced 
a  very  painful  impression.  The  authors  were 
called  the  "Seven  against  Christ."     It  was 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      205 

laid  down  that  the  Bible  is  to  be  interpreted 
like  any  other  book.  "It  is  not  a  useful 
lesson  for  the  young  student  to  apply  to 
Scripture  principles  which  he  would  hesitate 
to  apply  to  other  books;  to  make  formal 
reconcilements  of  discrepancies  which  he 
would  not  think  of  reconciling  in  ordinary 
history;  to  divide  simple  words  into  double 
meanings;  to  adopt  the  fancies  or  conjectures 
of  Fathers  and  Commentators  as  real  knowl- 
edge." It  is  suggested  that  the  Hebrew 
prophecies  do  not  contain  the  element  of 
prediction.  Contradictory  accounts,  or  ac- 
counts which  can  only  be  reconciled  by  con- 
jecture, cannot  possibly  have  been  dictated 
by  God.  The  discrepancies  between  the 
genealogies  of  Jesus  in  Matthew  and  Luke, 
or  between  the  accounts  of  the  Resurrection, 
can  be  attributed  "neither  to  any  defect  in 
our  capacities  nor  to  any  reasonable  presump- 
tion of  a  hidden  wise  design,  nor  to  any  par- 
tial spiritual  endowments  in  the  narrators." 
The  orthodox  arguments  which  lay  stress 
on  the  assertion  of  witnesses  as  the  supreme 
evidence  of  fact,  in  support  of  miraculous 
occurrences,  are  set  aside  on  the  ground  that 
testimony  is  a  blind  guide  and  can  avail 
nothing  against  reason  and  the  strong  grounds 
we  have  for  believing  in  permanent  order. 
It  is   argued   that,   under   the  Thirty-nine 


206         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Articles,  it  is  permissible  to  accept  as  "parable 
or  poetry  or  legend"  such  stories  as  that  of 
an  ass  speaking  with  a  man's  voice,  of  waters 
standing  in  a  solid  heap,  of  witches  and  a 
variety  of  apparitions,  and  to  judge  for 
ourselves  of  such  questions  as  the  personality 
of  Satan  or  the  primeval  institution  of  the 
Sabbath.  The  whole  spirit  of  this  volume  is 
perhaps  expressed  in  the  observation  that  if 
any  one  perceives  "to  how  great  an  extent 
the  origin  itself  of  Christianity  rests  upon 
probable  evidence,  his  principle  will  relieve 
him  from  many  difficulties  which  might 
otherwise  be  very  disturbing.  For  relations 
which  may  repose  on  doubtful  grounds  as  mat- 
ters of  history,  and,  as  history,  be  incapa- 
ble of  being  ascertained  or  verified,  may  yet 
be  equally  suggestive  of  true  ideas  with  facts 
absolutely  certain" — that  is,  they  may  have 
a  spiritual  significance  although  they  are 
historically  false. 

The  most  daring  Essay  was  the  Rev.  Baden 
Powell's  Study  of  the  Evidences  of  Christianity. 
He  was  a  believer  in  evolution,  who  accepted 
Darwinism,  and  considered  miracles  impos- 
sible. The  volume  was  denounced  by  the 
Bishops,  and  in  1862  two  of  the  contributors, 
who  were  beneficed  clergymen  and  thus  open 
to  a  legal  attack,  were  prosecuted  and  tried 
in  the  Ecclesiastical  Court.     Condemned  on 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      207 

certain  points,  acquitted  on  others,  they  were 
sentenced  to  be  suspended  for  a  year,  and 
they  appealed  to  the  Privy  Council.  Lord 
Westbury  (Lord  Chancellor)  pronounced 
the  judgment  of  the  Judicial  Committee  of 
the  Council,  which  reversed  the  decision  of  the 
Ecclesiastical  Court.  The  Committee  held, 
among  other  things,  that  it  is  not  essential  for 
a  clergyman  to  believe  in  eternal  punishment. 
This  prompted  the  following  epitaph  on  Lord 
Westbury:  "Towards  the  close  of  his  earthly 
career  he  dismissed  Hell  with  costs  and  took 
away  from  Orthodox  members  of  the  Church 
of  England  their  last  hope  of  everlasting 
damnation." 

This  was  a  great  triumph  for  the  Broad 
Church  party,  and  it  is  an  interesting  event 
in  the  history  of  the  English  State-Church. 
Laymen  decided  (overruling  the  opinion  of 
the  Archbishops  of  Canterbury  and  York) 
what  theological  doctrines  are  and  are  not 
binding  on  a  clergyman,  and  granted  within 
the  Church  a  liberty  of  opinion  which  the 
majority  of  the  Church's  representatives 
regarded  as  pernicious.  This  liberty  was 
formally  established  in  1865  by  an  Act  of 
Parliament,  which  altered  the  form  in  which 
clergymen  were  required  to  subscribe  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles.  The  episode  of  Essays 
and  Reviews  is  a  landmark  in  the  history 
of  religious  thought  in  England. 


208  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

The  liberal  views  of  the  Broad  Churchmen 
and  their  attitude  to  the  Bible  gradually 
produced  some  effect  upon  those  who  differed 
most  from  them;  and  nowadays  there  is 
probably  no  one  who  would  not  admit,  at 
least,  that  such  a  passage  as  Genesis,  Chapter 
XIX,  might  have  been  composed  without  the 
direct  inspiration  of  the  Deity. 

During  the  next  few  years  orthodox  public 
opinion  was  shocked  or  disturbed  by  the  ap- 
pearance of  several  remarkable  books  which 
criticized,  ignored,  or  defied  authority — Lyell's 
Antiquity  of  Man,  Seeley's  Ecce  Homo  (which 
the  pious  Lord  Shaftesbury  said  was  "vomited 
from  the  jaws  of  hell"),  Lecky's  History  of 
Rationalism.  And  a  new  poet  of  liberty  arose 
who  did  not  fear  to  sound  the  loudest  notes 
of  defiance  against  all  that  authority  held 
sacred.  All  the  great  poets  of  the  nineteenth 
century  were  more  or  less  unorthodox; 
Wordsworth  in  the  years  of  his  highest  inspi- 
ration was  a  pantheist;  and  the  greatest  of 
all,  Shelley,  was  a  declared  atheist.  In  fear- 
less utterance,  in  unfaltering  zeal  against  the 
tyranny  of  Gods  and  Governments,  Swin- 
burne was  like  Shelley.  His  drama  Atalanta 
in  Calydon  (1865),  even  though  a  poet  is 
strictly  not  answerable  for  what  the  persons 
in  his  drama  say,  yet  with  its  denunciation  of 
"the  supreme  evil,  God,"  heralded  the  com- 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      209 

ing  of  a  new  champion  who  would  defy  the 
fortresses  of  authority.  And  in  the  following 
year  his  Poems  and  Ballads  expressed  the 
spirit  of  a  pagan  who  flouted  all  the  preju- 
dices and  sanctities  of  the  Christian  world. 

But  the  most  intense  and  exciting  period 
of  literary  warfare  against  orthodoxy  in 
England  began  about  1869,  and  lasted  for 
about  a  dozen  years,  during  which  enemies 
of  dogma,  of  all  complexions,  were  less  reticent 
and  more  aggressive  than  at  any  other  time 
in  the  century.  Lord  Morley  has  observed 
that  "the  force  of  speculative  literature 
always  hangs  on  practical  opportuneness," 
and  this  remark  is  illustrated  by  the  rational- 
istic literature  of  the  seventies.  It  was  a 
time  of  hope  and  fear,  of  progress  and  danger. 
Secularists  and  rationalists  were  encouraged 
by  the  Disestablishment  of  the  Church  in 
Ireland  (1869),  by  the  Act  which  allowed 
atheists  to  give  evidence  in  a  court  of  justice 
(1869),  by  the  abolition  of  religious  tests  at 
all  the  universities  (a  measure  frequently 
attempted  in  vain)  in  1871.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Education  Act  of  1870,  progressive 
though  it  was,  disappointed  the  advocates 
of  secular  education,  and  was  an  unwelcome 
sign  of  the  strength  of  ecclesiastical  influence. 
Then  there  was  the  general  alarm  felt  in 
Europe  by  all  outside  the  Roman  Church, 


210  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

and  by  some  within  it,  at  the  decree  of  the 
infallibility  of  the  Pope  (by  the  Vatican  Coun- 
cil 1869-70),  and  an  Englishman  (Cardinal 
Manning)  was  one  of  the  most  active  spirits 
in  bringing  about  this  decree.  It  would 
perhaps  have  caused  less  alarm  if  the  Pope's 
denunciation  of  modern  errors  had  not  been 
fresh  in  men's  memories.  At  the  end  of  1864 
he  startled  the  world  by  issuing  a  Syllabus 
"embracing  the  principal  errors  of  our  age." 
Among  these  were  the  propositions,  that  every 
man  is  free  to  adopt  and  profess  the  religion 
he  considers  true,  according  to  the  light  of 
reason;  that  the  Church  has  no  right  to 
employ  force;  that  metaphysics  can  and  ought 
to  be  pursued  without  reference  to  divine  and 
ecclesiastical  authority;  that  Catholic  states 
are  right  to  allow  foreign  immigrants  to 
exercise  their  own  religion  in  public;  that 
the  Pope  ought  to  make  terms  with  progress, 
liberalism,  and  modern  civilization.  The 
document  was  taken  as  a  declaration  of 
war  against  enlightenment,  and  the  Vatican 
Council  as  the  first  strategic  move  of  the  hosts 
of  darkness.  It  seemed  that  the  powers  of 
obscurantism  were  lifting  up  their  heads  with 
a  new  menace,  and  there  was  an  instinctive 
feeling  that  all  the  forces  of  reason  should  be 
brought  into  the  field.  The  history  of  the 
last  forty  years  shows  that  the  theory  of 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      211 

Infallibility,  since  it  has  become  a  dogma,  is 
not  more  harmful  than  it  was  before.  But 
the  efforts  of  the  Catholic  Church  in  the  years 
following  the  Council  to  overthrow  the  French 
Republic  and  to  rupture  the  new  German 
Empire  were  sufficiently  disquieting.  Against 
this  was  to  be  set  the  destruction  of  the 
temporal  power  of  the  Popes  and  the  com- 
plete freedom  of  Italy.  This  event  was  the 
sunrise  of  Swinburne's  Songs  before  Sunrise 
(which  appeared  in  1871),  a  seedplot  of 
atheism  and  revolution,  sown  with  implacable 
hatred  of  creeds  and  tyrants.  The  most 
wonderful  poem  in  the  volume,  the  Hym?i  of 
Man,  was  written  while  the  Vatican  Council 
was  sitting.  It  is  a  song  of  triumph  over  the 
God  of  the  priests,  stricken  by  the  doom  of 
the  Pope's  temporal  power.  The  concluding 
verses  will  show  the  spirit. 

"By  thy  name  that  in  hellfire  was  written, 

and  burned  at  the  point  of  thy  sword, 
Thou    art   smitten,    thou    God,    thou    art 

smitten;   thy   death  is  upon   thee,  O 

Lord. 
And  the  lovesong  of  earth  as  thou  diest 

resounds    through    the    wind    of    her 

wings — 
Glory  to  Man  in  the  highest !  for  Man  is  the 

master  of  things." 


212  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

The  fact  that  such  a  volume  could  appear 
with  impunity  vividly  illustrates  the  English 
policy  of  enforcing  the  laws  for  blasphemy 
only  in  the  case  of  publications  addressed  to 
the  masses. 

Political  circumstances  thus  invited  and 
stimulated  rationalists  to  come  forward  boldly, 
but  we  must  not  leave  out  of  account  the 
influence  of  the  Broad  Church  movement  and 
of  Darwinism.  The  Descent  of  Man  appeared 
precisely  in  1871.  A  new,  undogmatic  Chris- 
tianity was  being  preached  in  pulpits.  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen  remarked  (1873)  that  "it  may 
be  said,  with  little  exaggeration,  that  there 
is  not  only  no  article  in  the  creeds  which  may 
not  be  contradicted  with  impunity,  but  that 
there  is  none  which  may  not  be  contradicted 
in  a  sermon  calculated  to  win  the  reputation 
of  orthodoxy  and  be  regarded  as  a  judicious 
bid  for  a  bishopric.  The  popular  state  of 
mind  seems  to  be  typified  in  the  well-known 
anecdote  of  the  cautious  churchwarden,  who, 
whilst  commending  the  general  tendency  of 
his  incumbent's  sermon,  felt  bound  to  hazard 
a  protest  upon  one  point.  'You  see,  sir,'  as 
he  apologetically  explained,  'I  think  there 
be  a  God.'  He  thought  it  an  error  of  taste 
or  perhaps  of  judgment,  to  hint  a  doubt  as 
to  the  first  article  of  the  creed." 

The  influence  exerted  among  the  cultivated 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      213 

classes  by  the  aesthetic  movement  (Ruskin, 
Morris,  the  Pre-Raphaelite  painters;  then 
Pater's  Lectures  on  the  Renaissance,  1873)  was 
also  a  sign  of  the  times.  For  the  attitude  of 
these  critics,  artists,  and  poets  was  essentially 
pagan.  The  saving  truths  of  theology  were 
for  them  as  if  they  did  not  exist.  The  ideal 
of  happiness  was  found  in  a  region  in  which 
heaven  was  ignored. 

The  time  then  seemed  opportune  for  speak- 
ing out.  Of  the  unorthodox  books  and 
essays,1  which  influenced  the  young  and 
alarmed  believers,  in  these  exciting  years, 
most  were  the  works  of  men  who  may  be 
most  fairly  described  by  the  comprehensive 
term  agnostics — a  name  which  had  been 
recently  invented  by  Professor  Huxley. 

The  agnostic  holds  that  there  are  limits  to 
human  reason,  and  that  theology  lies  outside 
those  limits.  Within  those  limits  lies  the 
world  with  which  science  (including  psy- 
chology) deals.  Science  deals  entirely  with 
phenomena,  and  has  nothing  to  say  to  the 
nature  of  the  ultimate  reality  which  may  lie 
behind  phenomena.    There  are  four  possible 

1  Besides  the  works  referred  to  in  the  text,  may  be  men- 
tioned: Winwood  Reade,  Martyrdom  of  Man,  1871;  Mill, 
Three  Essays  on  Religion;  W.  R.  Cassels,  Supernatural 
Religion;  Tyndall,  Address  to  British  Association  at  Belfast; 
Huxley,  Animal  Automatism;  W.  K.  Clifford,;  Body  and 
Mind;  all  in  1874. 


214  FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT 

attitudes  to  this  ultimate  reality.  There  is 
the  attitude  of  the  metaphysician  and  theo- 
logian, who  are  convinced  not  only  that  it 
exists  but  that  it  can  be  at  least  partly 
known.  There  is  the  attitude  of  the  man 
who  denies  that  it  exists;  but  he  must  be 
also  a  metaphysician,  for  its  existence  can 
only  be  disproved  by  metaphysical  argu- 
ments. Then  there  are  those  who  assert 
that  it  exists  but  deny  that  we  can  know 
anything  about  it.  And  finally  there  are 
those  who  say  that  we  cannot  know  whether 
it  exists  or  not.  These  last  are  "agnostics" 
in  the  strict  sense  of  the  term,  men  who 
profess  not  to  know.  The  third  class  go 
beyond  phenomena  in  so  far  as  they  assert 
that  there  is  an  ultimate  though  unknow- 
able reality  beneath  phenomena.  But  ag- 
nostic is  commonly  used  in  a  wide  sense 
so  as  to  include  the  third  as  well  as  the 
fourth  class — those  who  assume  an  unknow- 
able, as  well  as  those  who  do  not  know 
whether  there  is  an  unknowable  or  not. 
Comte  and  Spencer,  for  instance,  who  be- 
lieved in  an  unknowable,  are  counted  as 
agnostics.  The  difference  between  an  agnos- 
tic and  an  atheist  is  that  the  atheist  posi- 
tively denies  the  existence  of  a  personal 
God,  the  agnostic  does  not  believe  in  it. 
The  writer  of  this  period  who  held  agnos- 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      215 

ticism  in  its  purest  form,  and  who  turned 
the  dry  light  of  reason  on  to  theological 
opinions  with  the  most  merciless  logic,  was 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen.  His  best-known  essay, 
"An  Agnostic's  Apology"  {Fortnightly  Re- 
view, 1876),  raises  the  question,  have  the 
dogmas  of  orthodox  theologians  any  mean- 
ing? Do  they  offer,  for  this  is  what  we 
want,  an  intelligible  reconciliation  of  the 
discords  in  the  universe?  It  is  shown  in 
detail  that  the  various  theological  explana- 
tions of  the  dealings  of  God  with  man,  when 
logically  pressed,  issue  in  a  confession  of 
ignorance.  And  what  is  this  but  agnos- 
ticism? You  may  call  your  doubt  a  mystery, 
but  mystery  is  only  the  theological  phrase 
for  agnosticism.  "Why,  when  no  honest 
man  will  deny  in  private  that  every  ulti- 
mate problem  is  wrapped  in  the  profoundest 
mystery,  do  honest  men  proclaim  in  pulpits 
that  unhesitating  certainty  is  the  duty  of 
the  most  foolish  and  ignorant?  We  are 
a  company  of  ignorant  beings,  dimly  dis- 
cerning light  enough  for  our  daily  needs, 
but  hopelessly  differing  whenever  we  attempt 
to  describe  the  ultimate  origin  or  end  of 
our  paths;  and  yet,  when  one  of  us  ven- 
tures to  declare  that  we  don't  know  the 
map  of  the  Universe  as  well  as  the  map  of 
our  infinitesimal  parish,  he  is  hooted,  reviled, 


216         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

and  perhaps  told  that  he  will  be  damned  to 
all  eternity  for  his  faithlessness."  The  char- 
acteristic of  Leslie  Stephen's  essays  is  that 
they  are  less  directed  to  showing  that  ortho- 
dox theology  is  untrue  as  that  there  is  no 
reality  about  it,  and  that  its  solutions  of 
difficulties  are  sham  solutions.  If  it  solved 
any  part  of  the  mystery,  it  would  be  wel- 
come, but  it  does  not,  it  only  adds  new  dif- 
ficulties. It  is  "a  mere  edifice  of  moon- 
shine." The  writer  makes  no  attempt  to 
prove  by  logic  that  ultimate  reality  lies 
outside  the  limits  of  human  reason.  He 
bases  this  conclusion  on  the  fact  that  all 
philosophers  hopelessly  contradict  one  an- 
other; if  the  subject-matter  of  philosophy 
were,  like  physical  science,  within  the  reach 
of  the  intelligence,  some  agreement  must 
have  been  reached. 

The  Broad  Church  movement,  the  at- 
tempts to  liberalize  Christianity,  to  pour 
its  old  wine  into  new  bottles,  to  make  it 
unsectarian  and  undogmatic,  to  find  com- 
promises between  theology  and  science, 
found  no  favour  in  Leslie  Stephen's  eyes, 
and  he  criticized  all  this  with  a  certain  con- 
tempt. There  was  a  controversy  about 
the  efficacy  of  prayer.  Is  it  reasonable, 
for  instance,  to  pray  for  rain?  Here  science 
and  theology  were  at  issue  on  a  practical 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      217 

point  which  comes  within  the  domain  of 
science.  Some  theologians  adopted  the 
compromise  that  to  pray  against  an  eclipse 
would  be  foolish,  but  to  pray  for  rain  might 
be  sensible.  "One  phenomenon,"  Stephen 
wrote,  "is  just  as  much  the  result  of  fixed 
causes  as  the  other;  but  it  is  easier  for  the 
imagination  to  suppose  the  interference  of 
a  divine  agent  to  be  hidden  away  somewhere 
amidst  the  infinitely  complex  play  of  forces, 
which  elude  our  calculations  in  meteoro- 
logical phenomena,  than  to  believe  in  it 
where  the  forces  are  simple  enough  to  admit 
of  prediction.  The  distinction  is  of  course 
invalid  in  a  scientific  sense.  Almighty  power 
can  interfere  as  easily  with  the  events  which 
are,  as  with  those  which  are  not,  in  the 
Nautical  Almanac.  One  cannot  suppose 
that  God  retreats  as  science  advances,  and 
that  he  spoke  in  thunder  and  lightning 
till  Franklin  unravelled  the  laws  of  their 
phenomena." 

Again,  when  a  controversy  about  hell 
engaged  public  attention,  and  some  other- 
wise orthodox  theologians  bethought  them- 
selves that  eternal  punishment  was  a  horrible 
doctrine  and  then  found  that  the  evidence 
for  it  was  not  quite  conclusive  and  were 
bold  enough  to  say  so,  Leslie  Stephen 
stepped  in  to  point  out  that,  if  so,  historical 


218  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Christianity  deserves  all  that  its  most  viru- 
lent enemies  have  said  about  it  in  this  re- 
spect. When  the  Christian  creed  really 
ruled  men's  consciences,  nobody  could  utter 
a  word  against  the  truth  of  the  dogma  of 
hell.  If  that  dogma  had  not  an  intimate 
organic  connection  with  the  creed,  jf  it  had 
been  a  mere  unimportant  accident,  it  could 
not  have  been  so  vigorous  and  persistent 
wherever  Christianity  was  strongest.  The 
attempt  to  eliminate  it  or  soften  it  down 
is  a  sign  of  decline.  "Now,  at  last,  your 
creed  is  decaying.  People  have  discovered 
that  you  know  nothing  about  it;  that 
heaven  and  hell  belong  to  dreamland;  that 
the  impertinent  young  curate  who  tells  me 
that  I  shall  be  burnt  everlastingly  for  not 
sharing  his  superstition  is  just  as  ignorant 
as  I  am  myself,  and  that  I  know  as  much  as 
my  dog.  And  then  you  calmly  say  again, 
'It  is  all  a  mistake.  Only  believe  in  a  some- 
thing— and  we  will  make  it  as  easy  for  you 
as  possible.  Hell  shall  have  no  more  than 
a  fine  equable  temperature,  really  good  for 
the  constitution;  there  shall  be  nobody  in  it 
except  Judas  Iscariot  and  one  or  two  others; 
and  even  the  poor  Devil  shall  have  a  chance 
if  he  will  resolve  to  mend  his  ways." 

Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  may,  I  suppose,  be 
numbered  among  the  agnostics,  but  he  was 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      219 

of  a  very  different  type.  He  introduced  a 
new  kind  of  criticism  of  the  Bible — literary 
criticism.  Deeply  concerned  for  morality 
and  religion,  a  supporter  of  the  Established 
Church,  he  took  the  Bible  under  his  special 
protection,  and  in  three  works,  St.  Paul  and 
Protestantism,  1870,  Literature  and  Dogma, 
1873,  and  God  and  the  Bible,  1875,  he  endeav- 
oured to  rescue  that  book  from  its  orthodox 
exponents,  whom  he  regarded  as  the  cor- 
rupters of  Christianity.  It  would  be  just, 
he  says,  "but  hardly  perhaps  Christian,"  to 
fling  back  the  word  infidel  at  the  orthodox 
theologians  for  their  bad  literary  and  scien- 
tific criticisms  of  the  Bible  and  to  speak  of 
"the  torrent  of  infidelity  which  pours  every 
Sunday  from  our  pulpits!'*  The  corruption 
of  Christianity  has  been  due  to  theology 
"with  its  insane  licence  of  affirmation  about 
God,  its  insane  licence  of  affirmation  about 
immortality";  to  the  hypothesis  of  "a  mag- 
nified and  non-natural  man  at  the  head  of 
mankind's  and  the  world's  affairs";  and  the 
fancy  account  of  God  "made  up  by  putting 
scattered  expressions  of  the  Bible  together 
and  taking  them  literally."  He  chastises 
with  urbane  persiflage  the  knowledge  which 
the  orthodox  think  they  possess  about  the 
proceedings  and  plans  of  God.  "To  think 
they  know  what  passed  in  the  Council  of  the 


220  FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT 

Trinity  is  not  hard  to  them;  they  could 
easily  think  they  even  knew  what  were  the 
hangings  of  the  Trinity's  council-chamber." 
Yet  "the  very  expression,  the  Trinity,  jars 
with  the  whole  idea  and  character  of  Bible- 
religion;  but,  lest  the  Socinian  should  be 
unduly  elated  at  hearing  this,  let  us  hasten 
to  add  that  so  too,  and  just  as  much,  does 
the  expression,  a  great  Personal  First  Cause." 
He  uses  God  as  the  least  inadequate  name 
for  that  universal  order  which  the  intellect 
feels  after  as  a  law,  and  the  heart  feels  after 
as  a  benefit;  and  defines  it  as  ''the  stream  of 
tendency  by  which  all  things  strive  to  fulfil 
the  law  of  their  being."  He  defined  it  fur- 
ther as  a  Power  that  makes  for  righteousness, 
and  thus  went  considerably  beyond  the  ag- 
nostic position.  He  was  impatient  of  the 
minute  criticism  which  analyzes  the  Biblical 
documents  and  discovers  inconsistencies  and 
absurdities,  and  he  did  not  appreciate  the 
importance  of  the  comparative  study  of 
religions.  But  when  we  read  of  a  dignitary 
in  a  recent  Church  congress  laying  down  that 
the  narratives  in  the  books  of  Jonah  and 
Daniel  must  be  accepted  because  Jesus 
quoted  them,  we  may  wish  that  Arnold 
were  here  to  reproach  the  orthodox  for 
"want  of  intellectual  seriousness." 
These  years  also  saw  the  appearance  of 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      221 

Mr.  John  Morley's  sympathetic  studies  of 
the  French  freethinkers  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  Voltaire  (1872),  Rousseau  (1873), 
and  Diderot  (1878).  He  edited  the  Fort- 
nightly Review,  and  for  some  years  this 
journal  was  distinguished  by  brilliant  criti- 
cisms on  the  popular  religion,  contributed 
by  able  men  writing  from  many  points  of 
view.  A  part  of  the  book  which  he  after- 
wards published  under  the  title  Compromise 
appeared  in  the  Fortnightly  in  1874.  In 
Compromise ,  "the  whole  system  of  objective 
propositions  which  make  up  the  popular 
belief  of  the  day"  is  condemned  as  mis- 
chievous, and  it  is  urged  that  those  who 
disbelieve  should  speak  out  plainly.  Speak- 
ing out  is  an  intellectual  duty.  English- 
men have  a  strong  sense  of  political  respon- 
sibility, and  a  correspondingly  weak  sense  of 
intellectual  responsibility.  Even  minds  that 
are  not  commonplace  are  affected  for  the 
worse  by  the  political  spirit  which  "is  the 
great  force  in  throwing  love  of  truth  and 
accurate  reasoning  into  a  secondary  place." 
And  the  principles  which  have  prevailed  in 
politics  have  been  adopted  by  theology  for 
her  own  use.  In  the  one  case,  convenience 
first,  truth  second;  in  the  other,  emotional 
comfort  first,  truth  second.  If  the  immor- 
ality is  less  gross  in  the  case  of  religion, 


222  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

there  is  "the  stain  of  intellectual  improbity." 
And  this  is  a  crime  against  society,  for  "they 
who  tamper  with  veracity  from  whatever 
motive  are  tampering  with  the  vital  force 
of  human  progress."  The  intellectual  in- 
sincerity which  is  here  blamed  is  just  as 
prevalent  to-day.  The  English  have  not 
changed  their  nature,  the  "political"  spirit 
is  still  rampant,  and  we  are  ruled  by  the 
view  that  because  compromise  is  necessary 
in  politics  it  is  also  a  good  thing  in  the  intel- 
lectual domain. 

The  Fortnightly  under  Mr.  Morley's  guid- 
ance was  an  effective  organ  of  enlighten- 
ment. I  have  no  space  to  touch  on  the 
works  of  other  men  of  letters  and  of  men  of 
science  in  these  combative  years,  but  it 
is  to  be  noted  that,  while  denunciations  of 
modern  thought  poured  from  the  pulpits, 
a  popular  diffusion  of  freethought  was  carried 
on,  especially  by  Mr.  Bradlaugh  in  public 
lectures  and  in  his  paper,  the  National  Re- 
former, not  without  collisions  with  the  civil 
authorities. 

If  we  take  the  cases  in  which  the  civil 
authorities  in  England  have  intervened  to 
repress  the  publication  of  unorthodox  opin- 
ions during  the  last  two  centuries,  we  find 
that  the  object  has  always  been  to  prevent 
the  spread  of  freethought  among  the  masses. 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      223 

The  victims  have  been  either  poor,  unedu- 
cated people,  or  men  who  propagated  free- 
thought  in  a  popular  form.  I  touched  upon 
this  before  in  speaking  of  Paine,  and  it  is 
borne  out  by  the  prosecutions  of  the  nine- 
teenth and  twentieth  centuries.  The  un- 
confessed  motive  has  been  fear  of  the  people. 
Theology  has  been  regarded  as  a  good  instru- 
ment for  keeping  the  poor  in  order,  and 
unbelief  as  a  cause  or  accompaniment  of 
dangerous  political  opinions.  The  idea  has 
not  altogether  disappeared  that  free  thought 
is  peculiarly  indecent  in  the  poor,  that  it  is 
highly  desirable  to  keep  them  superstitious 
in  order  to  keep  them  contented,  that  they 
should  be  duly  thankful  for  all  the  theo- 
logical as  well  as  social  arrangements  which 
have  been  made  for  them  by  their  betters. 
I  may  quote  from  an  essay  of  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  an  anecdote  which  admirably 
expresses  the  becoming  attitude  of  the  poor 
towards  ecclesiastical  institutions.  'The 
master  of  a  workhouse  in  Essex  was  once 
called  in  to  act  as  chaplain  to  a  dying  pauper. 
The  poor  soul  faintly  murmured  some  hopes 
of  heaven.  But  this  the  master  abruptly 
cut  short  and  warned  him  to  turn  his  last 
thoughts  towards  hell.  'And  thankful  you 
ought  to  be,'  said  he,  'that  you  have  a  hell 
to  go  to.'" 


2U  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

The  most  important  English  freethinkers 
who  appealed  to  the  masses  were  Holyoake,1 
the  apostle  of  "secularism,"  and  Bradlaugh. 
The  great  achievement  for  which  Bradlaugh 
will  be  best  remembered  was  the  securing 
of  the  right  of  unbelievers  to  sit  in  Parlia- 
ment without  taking  an  oath  (1888). 
The  chief  work  to  which  Holyoake  (who 
in  his  early  years  was  imprisoned  for  blas- 
phemy) contributed  was  the  abolition  of 
taxes  on  the  Press,  which  seriously  hampered 
the  popular  diffusion  of  knowledge.2  In 
England,  censorship  of  the  Press  had  long 
ago  disappeared  (above,  p.  139);  in  most 
other  European  countries  it  was  abolished 
in  the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century.3 

In  the  progressive  countries  of  Europe 
there  has  been  a  marked  growth  of  tolerance 
(I  do  not  mean  legal  toleration,  but  the  tol- 

1  It  may  be  noted  that  Holyoake  towards  the  end  of 
his  life  helped  to  found  the  Rationalist  Press  Association, 
of  which  Mr.  Edward  Clodd  has  been  for  many  years 
Chairman.  This  is  the  chief  'society  in  England  for  prop- 
agating rationalism,  and  its  main  object  is  to  diffuse  in  a 
cheap  form  the  works  of  freethinkers  of  mark  (cp.  Bibliog- 
raphy). I  understand  that  more  than  two  million  copies 
of  its  cheap  reprints  have  been  sold. 

2  The  advertisement  tax  was  abolished  in  1853,  the  stamp 
tax  in  1855,  the  paper  duty  in  1801,  and  the  optional  duty 
in  1870. 

*  In  Austria-Hungary  the  police  have  the  power  to  suppress 
printed  matter  provisionally.  In  Russia  the  Press  was  de- 
clared free  in  1905  by  an  Imperial  decree,  which,  however, 
has  become  a  dead  letter.  The  newspapers  are  completely 
under  the  control  of  the  police. 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      225 

erance  of  public  opinion)  during  the  last 
thirty  years.  A  generation  ago  Lord  Morley 
wrote:  "The  preliminary  stage  has  scarcely 
been  reached — the  stage  in  which  public 
opinion  grants  to  every  one  the  unrestricted 
right  of  shaping  his  own  beliefs,  independ- 
ently of  those  of  the  people  who  surround 
him."  I  think  this  preliminary  stage  has 
now  been  passed.  Take  England.  We  are 
now  far  from  the  days  when  Dr.  Arnold 
would  have  sent  the  elder  Mill  to  Botany 
Bay  for  irreligious  opinions.  But  we  are 
also  far  from  the  days  when  Darwin's  Descent 
created  an  uproar.  Darwin  has  been  buried 
in  Westminster  Abbey.  To-day  books  can 
appear  denying  the  historical  existence  of 
Jesus  without  causing  any  commotion.  It 
may  be  doubted  whether  what  Lord  Acton 
wrote  in  1877  would  be  true  now:  "There 
are  in  our  day  many  educated  men  who 
think  it  right  to  persecute."  In  1895,  Lecky 
was  a  candidate  for  the  representation  of 
Dublin  University.  His  rationalistic  opin- 
ions were  indeed  brought  up  against  him, 
but  he  was  successful,  though  the  majority 
of  the  constituents  were  orthodox.  In  the 
seventies  his  candidature  would  have  been 
hopeless.  The  old  commonplace  that  a 
freethinker  is  sure  to  be  immoral  is  no  longer 
heard.     We   may   say   that   we   have   now 


226  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

reached  a  stage  at  which  it  is  admitted  by 
every  one  who  counts  (except  at  the  Vatican), 
that  there  is  nothing  in  earth  or  heaven  which 
may  not  legitimately  be  treated  without  any 
of  the  assumptions  which  in  old  days  author- 
ity used  to  impose. 

In  this  brief  review  of  the  triumphs  of 
reason  in  the  nineteenth  century,  we  have 
been  considering  the  discoveries  of  science 
and  criticism  which  made  the  old  orthodoxy 
logically  untenable.  But  the  advance  in 
freedom  of  thought,  the  marked  difference 
in  the  general  attitude  of  men  in  all  lands 
towards  theological  authority  to-day  from 
the  attitude  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  cannot 
altogether  be  explained  by  the  power  of  logic. 
It  is  not  so  much  criticism  of  old  ideas  as  the 
appearance  of  new  ideas  and  interests  that 
changes  the  views  of  men  at  large.  It  is 
not  logical  demonstrations  but  new  social 
conceptions  that  bring  about  a  general  trans- 
formation of  attitude  towards  ultimate  prob- 
lems. Now  the  idea  of  the  progress  of  the 
human  race  must,  I  think,  be  held  largely 
answerable  for  this  change  of  attitude.  It 
must,  I  think,  be  held  to  have  operated 
powerfully  as  a  solvent  of  theological  beliefs. 
I  have  spoken  of  the  teaching  of  Diderot  and 
his  friends  that  man's  energies  should  be 
devoted  to  making  the  earth  pleasant.     A 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      227 

new  ideal  was  substituted  for  the  old  ideal 
based  on  theological  propositions.  It  in- 
spired the  English  Utilitarian  philosophers 
(Bentham,  James  Mill,  J.  S.  Mill,  Grote)  who 
preached  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  great- 
est number  as  the  supreme  object  of  action 
and  the  basis  of  morality.  This  ideal  was 
powerfully  reinforced  by  the  doctrine  of  his- 
torical progress,  which  was  started  in  France 
(1750)  by  Turgot,  who  made  progress  the 
organic  principle  of  history.  It  was  devel- 
oped by  Condorcet  (1793),  and  put  forward 
by  Priestley  in  England.  The  idea  was 
seized  upon  by  the  French  socialistic  phi- 
losophers, Saint-Simon  and  Fourier.  The 
optimism  of  Fourier  went  so  far  as  to  antici- 
pate the  time  when  the  sea  would  be  turned 
by  man's  ingenuity  into  lemonade,  when 
there  would  be  37  million  poets  as  great  as 
Homer,  37  million  writers  as  great  as  Moliere, 
37  million  men  of  science  equal  to  Newton. 
But  it  was  Comte  who  gave  the  doctrine 
weight  and  power.  His  social  philosophy 
and  his  religion  of  Humanity  are  based  upon 
it.  The  triumphs  of  science  endorsed  it;  it 
has  been  associated  with,  though  it  is  not 
necessarily  implied  in,  the  scientific  theory 
of  evolution;  and  it  is  perhaps  fair  to  say 
that  it  has  been  the  guiding  spiritual  force 
of   the   nineteenth   century.     It   has   intro- 


228  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

duced  the  new  ethical  principle  of  duty  to 
posterity.  We  shall  hardly  be  far  wrong  if 
we  say  that  the  new  interest  in  the  future 
and  the  progress  of  the  race  has  done  a  great 
deal  to  undermine  unconsciously  the  old 
interest  in  a  life  beyond  the  grave;  and  it 
has  dissolved  the  blighting  doctrine  of  the 
radical  corruption  of  man. 

Nowhere  has  the  theory  of  progress  been 
more  emphatically  recognized  than  in  the 
Monistic  movement  which  has  been  exciting 
great  interest  in  Germany  (1910-12).  This 
movement  is  based  on  the  ideas  of  Haeckel, 
who  is  looked  up  to  as  the  master;  but  those 
ideas  have  been  considerably  changed  under 
the  influence  of  Ostwald,  the  new  leader. 
While  Haeckel  is  a  biologist,  Ostwald 's 
brilliant  work  was  done  in  chemistry  and 
physics.  The  new  Monism  differs  from  the 
old,  in  the  first  place,  in  being  much  less 
dogmatic.  It  declares  that  all  that  is  in  our 
experience  can  be  the  object  of  a  correspond- 
ing science.  It  is  much  more  a  method  than 
a  system,  for  its  sole  ultimate  object  is  to 
comprehend  all  human  experience  in  unified 
knowledge.  Secondly,  while  it  maintains, 
with  Haeckel,  evolution  as  the  guiding  prin- 
ciple in  the  history  of  living  things,  it  rejects 
his  pantheism  and  his  theory  of  thinking 
atoms.     The  old  mechanical  theory  of  the 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      229 

physical  world  has  been  gradually  supplanted 
by  the  theory  of  energy,  and  Ostwald,  who 
was  one  of  the  foremost  exponents  of  energy, 
has  made  it  a  leading  idea  of  Monism.  What 
has  been  called  matter  is,  so  far  as  we  know 
now,  simply  a  complex  of  energies,  and  he 
has  sought  to  extend  the  "energetic"  princi- 
ple from  physical  or  chemical  to  biological, 
psychical,  and  social  phenomena.  But  it  is 
to  be  observed  that  no  finality  is  claimed  for 
the  conception  of  energy;  it  is  simply  an 
hypothesis  which  corresponds  to  our  present 
stage  of  knowledge,  and  may,  as  knowledge 
advances,  be  superseded. 

Monism  resembles  the  positive  philosophy 
and  religion  of  Comte  in  so  far  as  it  means  an 
outlook  on  life  based  entirely  on  science  and 
excluding  theology,  mysticism,  and  meta- 
physics. It  may  be  called  a  religion,  if  we 
adopt  Mr.  MacTaggart's  definition  of  religion 
as  "an  emotion  resting  on  a  conviction  of' 
the  harmony  between  ourselves  and  the 
universe  at  large."  But  it  is  much  better  not 
to  use  the  word  religion  in  connexion  with  it, 
and  the  Monists  have  no  thought  of  finding 
a  Monistic,  as  Comte  founded  a  Positivist, 
church.  They  insist  upon  the  sharp  opposi- 
tion between  the  outlook  of  science  and  the 
outlook  of  religion,  and  find  the  mark  of 
spiritual  progress  in  the  fact  that  religion  is 


2S0  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

gradually  becoming  less  indispensable.  The 
further  we  go  back  in  the  past,  the  more 
valuable  is  religion  as  an  element  in  civiliza- 
tion; as  we  advance,  it  retreats  more  and 
more  into  the  background,  to  be  replaced  by 
science.  Religions  have  been,  in  principle, 
pessimistic,  so  far  as  the  present  world  is 
concerned;  Monism  is,  in  principle,  opti- 
mistic, for  it  recognizes  that  the  process  of 
his  evolution  has  overcome,  in  increasing 
measure,  the  bad  element  in  man,  and  will  go 
on  overcoming  it  still  more.  Monism  pro- 
claims that  development  and  progress  are 
the  practical  principles  of  human  conduct, 
while  the  Churches,  especially  the  Catholic 
Church,  have  been  steadily  conservative, 
and  though  they  have  been  unable  to  put  a 
stop  to  progress  have  endeavoured  to  sup- 
press its  symptoms — to  bottle  up  the  steam.1 
The  Monistic  congress  at  Hamburg  in  1911 
had  a  success  which  surprised  its  promoters. 
The  movement  bids  fair  to  be  a  powerful 
influence  in  diffusing  rationalistic  thought.2 
If   we    take    the    three    large    States   of 


1  I  have  taken  these  points,  illustrating  the  Monistic 
attitude  to  the  Churches,  from  Ostwald's  Monistic  Sunday 
Sermons  (German),  1911,  1912. 

2  I  may  note  here  that,  as  this  is  not  a  history  of  thought, 
I  make  no  reference  to  recent  philosophical  speculations 
(in  America,  England,  and  France)  which  are  sometimes 
claimed  as  tending  to  bolster  up  theology.  But  they  are 
all  profoundly  unorthodox. 


PROGRESS  OF  RATIONALISM      231 

Western  Europe,  in  which  the  majority  of 
Christians  are  Catholics,  we  see  how  the  ideal 
of  progress,  freedom  of  thought,  and  the 
decline  of  ecclesiastical  power  go  together. 
In  Spain,  where  the  Church  has  enormous 
power  and  wealth  and  can  still  dictate  to  the 
Court  and  the  politicians,  the  idea  of  prog- 
ress, which  is  vital  in  France  and  Italy,  has 
not  yet  made  its  influence  seriously  felt. 
Liberal  thought  indeed  is  widely  spread  in 
the  small  educated  class,  but  the  great  ma- 
jority of  the  whole  population  are  illiterate, 
and  it  is  the  interest  of  the  Church  to  keep 
them  so.  The  education  of  the  people,  as  all 
enlightened  Spaniards  confess,  is  the  press- 
ing need  of  the  country.  How  formidable 
are  the  obstacles  which  will  have  to  be  over- 
come before  modern  education  is  allowed  to 
spread  was  shown  four  years  ago  by  the 
tragedy  of  Francisco  Ferrer,  which  reminded 
everybody  that  in  one  corner  of  Western 
Europe  the  mediaeval  spirit  is  still  vigorous. 
Ferrer  had  devoted  himself  to  the  founding 
of  modern  schools  in  the  province  of  Cata- 
lonia (since  1901).  He  was  a  rationalist, 
and  his  schools,  which  had  a  marked  success, 
were  entirely  secular.  The  ecclesiastical  au- 
thorities execrated  him,  and  in  the  summer 
of  1909  chance  gave  them  the  means  of 
destroying   him.     A   strike   of   workmen   at 


282  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

Barcelona  developed  into  a  violent  revolu- 
tion, Ferrer  happened  to  be  in  Barcelona 
for  some  days  at  the  beginning  of  the  move- 
ment, with  which  he  had  no  connection 
whatever,  and  his  enemies  seized  the  oppor- 
tunity to  make  him  responsible  for  it.  False 
evidence  (including  forged  documents)  was 
manufactured.  Evidence  which  would  have 
helped  his  case  was  suppressed.  The  Catholic 
papers  agitated  against  him,  and  the  leading 
ecclesiastics  of  Barcelona  urged  the  Govern- 
ment not  to  spare  the  man  who  founded  the 
modern  schools,  the  root  of  all  the  trouble. 
Ferrer  was  condemned  by  a  military  tribunal 
and  shot  (Oct.  13).  He  suffered  in  the  cause 
of  reason  and  freedom  of  thought,  though,  as 
there  is  no  longer  an  Inquisition,  his  enemies 
had  to  kill  him  under  the  false  charge  of 
anarchy  and  treason.  It  is  possible  that  the 
indignation  which  was  felt  in  Europe  and  was 
most  loudly  expressed  in  France  may  prevent 
the  repetition  of  such  extreme  measures,  but 
almost  anything  may  happen  in  a  country 
where  the  Church  is  so  powerful  and  so 
bigoted,  and  the  politicians  so  corrupt. 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  233 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   JUSTIFICATION    OF   LIBERTY   OF 
THOUGHT 

Most  men  who  have  been  brought  up  in 
the  free  atmosphere  of  a  modern  State  sym- 
pathize with  liberty  in  its  long  struggle  with 
authority  and  may  find  it  difficult  to  see  that 
anything  can  be  said  for  the  tyrannical,  and 
as  they  think  extraordinarily  perverse,  policy 
by  which  communities  and  governments  per- 
sistently sought  to  stifle  new  ideas  and  sup- 
press free  speculation.  The  conflict  sketched 
in  these  pages  appears  as  a  war  between  light 
and  darkness.  We  exclaim  that  altar  and 
throne  formed  a  sinister  conspiracy  against 
the  progress  of  humanity.  We  look  back 
with  horror  at  the  things  which  so  many 
champions  of  reason  endured  at  the  hands  of 
blind,  if  not  malignant,  bearers  of  authority. 

But  a  more  or  less  plausible  case  can  be 
made  out  for  coercion.  Let  us  take  the  most 
limited  view  of  the  lawful  powers  of  society 
over  its  individual  members.  Let  us  lay 
down,  with  Mill,  that  "the  sole  end  for  which 
mankind  are  warranted,  individually  and 
collectively,  in  interfering  with  the  liberty  of 
action  of  any  of  their  members  is  self-pro- 
tection," and  that  coercion  is  only  justified 


234  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

for  the  prevention  of  harm  to  others.  This  is 
the  minimum  claim  the  State  can  make,  and 
it  will  be  admitted  that  it  is  not  only  the 
right  but  the  duty  of  the  State  to  prevent 
harm  to  its  members.  That  is  what  it  is  for. 
Now  no  abstract  or  independent  principle  is 
discoverable,  why  liberty  of  speech  should 
be  a  privileged  form  of  liberty  of  action,  or 
why  society  should  lay  down  its  arms  of  de- 
fence and  fold  its  hands,  when  it  is  persuaded 
that  harm  is  threatened  to  it  through  the 
speech  of  any  of  its  members.  The  Govern- 
ment has  to  judge  of  the  danger,  and  its 
judgment  may  be  wrong;  but  if  it  is  con- 
vinced that  harm  is  being  done,  is  it  not  its 
plain  duty  to  interfere? 

This  argument  supplies  an  apology  for  the 
suppression  of  free  opinion  by  Governments 
in  ancient  and  modern  times.  It  can  be 
urged  for  the  Inquisition,  for  Censorship  of 
the  Press,  for  Blasphemy  laws,  for  all  coercive 
measures  of  the  kind,  that,  if  excessive  or  ill- 
judged,  they  were  intended  to  protect  society 
against  what  their  authors  sincerely  believed 
to  be  grave  injury,  and  were  simple  acts  of 
duty.  (This  apology,  of  course,  does  not 
extend  to  acts  done  for  the  sake  of  the  alleged 
good  of  the  victims  themselves,  namely,  to 
secure  their  future  salvation.) 

Nowadays  we  condemn  all  such  measures 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  235 

and  disallow  the  right  of  the  State  to  inter- 
fere with  the  free  expression  of  opinion.  So 
deeply  is  the  doctrine  of  liberty  seated  in  our 
minds  that  we  find  it  difficult  to  make  al- 
lowances for  the  coercive  practices  of  our 
misguided  ancestors.  How  is  this  doctrine 
justified?  It  rests  on  no  abstract  basis,  on 
no  principle  independent  of  society  itself, 
but  entirely  on  considerations  of  utility. 

We  saw  how  Socrates  indicated  the  social 
value  of  freedom  of  discussion.  We  saw  how 
Milton  observed  that  such  freedom  was  neces- 
sary for  the  advance  of  knowledge.  But  in 
the  period  during  which  the  cause  of  tolera- 
tion was  fought  for  and  practically  won,  the 
argument  more  generally  used  was  the  in- 
justice of  punishing  a  man  for  opinions  which 
he  honestly  held  and  could  not  help  holding, 
since  conviction  is  not  a  matter  of  will;  in 
other  words,  the  argument  that  error  is  not 
a  crime  and  that  it  is  therefore  unjust  to 
punish  it.  This  argument,  however,  does 
not  prove  the  case  for  freedom  of  discussion. 
The  advocate  of  coercion  may  reply:  We 
admit  that  it  is  unjust  to  punish  a  man  for 
private  erroneous  beliefs;  but  it  is  not  unjust 
to  forbid  the  propagation  of  such  beliefs  if 
we  are  convinced  that  they  are  harmful;  it 
is  not  unjust  to  punish  him,  not  for  holding 
them,  but  for  publishing  them.     The  truth 


236  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

is  that,  in  examining  principles,  the  word  just 
is  misleading.  All  the  virtues  are  based  on 
experience,  physiological  or  social,  and  jus- 
tice is  no  exception.  Just  designates  a  class 
of  rules  or  principles  of  which  the  social 
utility  has  been  found  by  experience  to  be 
paramount  and  which  are  recognized  to  be  so 
important  as  to  override  all  considerations  of 
immediate  expediency.  And  social  utility  is 
the  only  test.  It  is  futile,  therefore,  to  say 
to  a  Government  that  it  acts  unjustly  in 
coercing  opinion,  unless  it  is  shown  that  free- 
dom of  opinion  is  a  principle  of  such  over- 
mastering social  utility  as  to  render  other 
considerations  negligible.  Socrates  had  a 
true  instinct  in  taking  the  line  that  freedom 
is  valuable  to  society. 

The  reasoned  justification  of  liberty  of 
thought  is  due  to  J.  S.  Mill,  who  set  it  forth 
in  his  work  On  Liberty,  published  in  1859. 
This  book  treats  of  liberty  in  general,  ai.  1 
attempts  to  fix  the  frontier  of  the  region  in 
which  individual  freedom  should  be  con- 
sidered absolute  and  unassailable.  The  sec- 
ond chapter  considers  liberty  of  thought 
and  discussion,  and  if  many  may  think  that 
Mill  unduly  minimized  the  functions  of  so- 
ciety, underrating  its  claims  as  against  the 
individual,  few  will  deny  the  justice  of  the 
chief  arguments  or  question  the  general 
soundness  of  his  conclusions. 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  237 

Pointing  out  that  no  fixed  standard  was 
recognized  for  testing  the  propriety  of  the 
interference  on  the  part  of  the  community 
with  its  individual  members,  he  finds  the 
test  in  self-protection,  that  is,  the  prevention 
of  harm  to  others.  He  bases  the  proposition 
not  on  abstract  rights,  but  on  "utility,  in  the 
largest  sense,  grounded  on  the  permanent 
interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being." 
He  then  uses  the  following  argument  to  show 
that  to  silence  opinion  and  discussion  is  al- 
ways contrary  to  those  permanent  interests. 
Those  who  would  suppress  an  opinion  (it  is 
assumed  that  they  are  honest)  deny  its  truth, 
but  they  are  not  infallible.  They  may  be 
wrong,  or  right,  or  partly  wrong  and  partly 
right.  (1)  If  they  are  wrong  and  the  opinion 
they  would  crush  is  true,  they  have  robbed, 
or  done  their  utmost  to  rob,  mankind  of  a 
truth.  They  will  say:  But  we  were  justified, 
for  we  exercised  our  judgment  to  the  best  of 
our  ability,  and  are  we  to  be  told  that  be- 
cause our  judgment  is  fallible  we  are  not  to 
use  it?  We  forbade  the  propagation  of  an 
opinion  which  we  were  sure  was  false  and 
pernicious;  this  implies  no  greater  claim  to  in- 
fallibility than  any  act  done  by  public  author- 
ity. If  we  are  to  act  at  all,  we  must  assume 
our  own  opinion  to  be  true.  To  this  Mill 
acutely  replies:  "There  is  the  greatest  differ- 


238  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

ence  between  assuming  an  opinion  to  be  true, 
because  with  every  opportunity  for  contesting 
it  it  has  not  been  refuted,  and  assuming  its 
truth  for  the  purpose  of  not  permitting  its 
refutation.  Complete  liberty  of  contradict- 
ing and  disproving  our  opinion  is  the  very 
condition  which  justifies  us  in  assuming  its 
truth  for  purposes  of  action,  and  on  no  other 
terms  can  a  being  with  human  faculties  have 
any  rational  assurance  of  being  right." 

(2)  If  the  received  opinion  which  it  is 
sought  to  protect  against  the  intrusion  of 
error  is  true,  the  suppression  of  discussion  is 
still  contrary  to  general  utility.  A  received 
opinion  may  happen  to  be  true  (it  is  very 
seldom  entirely  true) ;  but  a  rational  certainty 
that  it  is  so  can  only  be  secured  by  the  fact 
that  it  has  been  fully  canvassed  but  has  not 
been  shaken. 

Commoner  and  more  important  is  (3)  the 
case  where  the  conflicting  doctrines  share  the 
truth  between  them.  Here  Mill  has  little 
difficulty  in  proving  the  utility  of  supple- 
menting one-sided  popular  truths  by  other 
truths  which  popular  opinion  omits  to  con- 
sider. And  he  observes  that  if  either  of  the 
opinions  which  share  the  truth  has  a  claim 
not  merely  to  be  tolerated  but  to  be  encour- 
aged, it  is  the  one  which  happens  to  be  held 
by  the  minority,  since  this  is  the  one  "which 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  239 

for  the  time  being  represents  the  neglected 
interests."  He  takes  the  doctrines  of  Rous- 
seau, which  might  conceivably  have  been  sup- 
pressed as  pernicious.  To  the  self-compla- 
cent eighteenth  century  those  doctrines  came 
as  "a  salutary  shock,  dislocating  the  com- 
pact mass  of  one-sided  opinion."  The  current 
opinions  were  indeed  nearer  to  the  truth  than 
Rousseau's,  they  contained  much  less  of  error; 
"nevertheless  there  lay  in  Rousseau's  doc- 
trine, and  has  floated  down  the  stream  of 
opinion  along  with  it,  a  considerable  amount 
of  exactly  those  truths  which  the  popular 
opinion  wanted;  and  these  are  the  de- 
posit which  we  left  behind  when  the  flood 
subsided." 

Such  is  the  drift  of  Mill's  main  argument. 
The  present  writer  would  prefer  to  state  the 
justification  of  freedom  of  opinion  in  a  some- 
what different  form,  though  in  accordance 
with  Mill's  reasoning.  The  progress  of  civili- 
zation, if  it  is  partly  conditioned  by  circum- 
stances beyond  man's  control,  depends  more, 
and  in  an  increasing  measure,  on  things 
which  are  within  his  own  power.  Prominent 
among  these  are  the  advancement  of  knowl- 
edge and  the  deliberate  adaptation  of  his 
habits  and  institutions  to  new  conditions. 
To  advance  knowledge  and  to  correct  errors, 
unrestricted  freedom  of  discussion  is  required. 


2-40  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

History  shows  that  knowledge  grew  when 
speculation  was  perfectly  free  in  Greece, 
and  that  in  modern  times,  since  restrictions 
on  inquiry  have  been  entirely  removed, 
it  has  advanced  with  a  velocity  which  would 
seem  diabolical  to  the  slaves  of  the  mediaeval 
Church.  Then,  it  is  obvious  that  in  order 
to  readjust  social  customs,  institutions,  and 
methods  to  new  needs  and  circumstances, 
there  must  be  unlimited  freedom  of  canvass- 
ing and  criticizing  them,  of  expressing  the 
most  unpopular  opinions,  no  matter  how  of- 
fensive to  prevailing  sentiment  they  may  be. 
If  the  history  of  civilization  has  any  lesson  to 
teach  it  is  this:  there  is  one  supreme  con- 
dition of  mental  and  moral  progress  which  it 
is  completely  within  the  power  of  man  him- 
self to  secure,  and  that  is  perfect  liberty  of 
thought  and  discussion.  The  establishment 
of  this  liberty  may  be  considered  the  most 
valuable  achievement  of  modern  civilization, 
and  as  a  condition  of  social  progress  it  should 
be  deemed  fundamental.  The  considerations 
of  permanent  utility  on  which  it  rests  must 
outweigh  any  calculations  of  present  ad- 
vantage which  from  time  to  time  might  be 
thought  to  demand  its  violation. 

It  is  evident  that  this  whole  argument 
depends  on  the  assumption  that  the  progress 
of  the  race,  its  intellectual  and  moral  develop- 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  241 

merit,  is  a  reality  and  is  valuable.  The  ar- 
gument will  not  appeal  to  any  one  who  holds 
with  Cardinal  Newman  that  "our  race's 
progress  and  perfectibility  is  a  dream,  because 
revelation  contradicts  it";  and  he  may 
consistently  subscribe  to  the  same  writer's 
conviction  that  "it  would  be  a  gain  to  this 
country  were  it  vastly  more  superstitious, 
more  bigoted,  more  gloomy,  more  fierce  in 
its  religion,  than  at  present  it  shows  itself 
to  be." 

While  Mill  was  writing  his  brilliant  Essay, 
which  every  one  should  read,  the  English 
Government  of  the  day  (1858)  instituted 
prosecutions  for  the  circulation  of  the  doc- 
trine that  it  is  lawful  to  put  tyrants  to  death, 
on  the  ground  that  the  doctrine  is  immoral. 
Fortunately  the  prosecutions  were  not  per- 
sisted in.  Mill  refers  to  the  matter,  and  main- 
tains that  such  a  doctrine  as  tyrannicide 
(and,  let  us  add,  anarchy)  does  not  form  any 
exception  to  the  rule  that  "there  ought  to 
exist  the  fullest  liberty  of  professing  and 
discussing,  as  a  matter  of  ethical  conviction, 
any  doctrine,  however  immoral  it  may  be 
considered." 

Exceptions,  cases  where  the  interference 
of  the  authorities  is  proper,  are  only  apparent, 
for  they  really  come  under  another  rule. 
For  instance,  if  there  is  a  direct  instigation 


242         FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

to  particular  acts  of  violence,  there  may  be 
a  legitimate  case  for  interference.  But  the 
incitement  must  be  deliberate  and  direct.  If 
I  write  a  book  condemning  existing  societies 
and  defending  a  theory  of  anarchy,  and  a  man 
who  reads  it  presently  commits  an  outrage, 
it  may  clearly  be  established  that  my  book 
made  the  man  an  anarchist  and  induced  him 
to  commit  the  crime,  but  it  would  be  illegiti- 
mate to  punish  me  or  suppress  the  book  unless 
it  contained  a  direct  incitement  to  the  specific 
crime  which  he  committed. 

It  is  conceivable  that  difficult  cases  might 
arise  where  a  government  might  be  strongly 
tempted,  and  might  be  urged  by  public 
clamour,  to  violate  the  principle  of  liberty. 
Let  us  suppose  a  case,  very  improbable,  but 
which  will  make  the  issue  clear  and  definite. 
Imagine  that  a  man  of  highly  magnetic  per- 
sonality, endowed  with  a  wonderful  power  of 
infecting  others  with  his  own  ideas  however 
irrational,  in  short  a  typical  religious  leader, 
is  convinced  that  the  world  will  come  to  an 
end  in  the  course  of  a  few  months.  He  goes 
about  the  country  preaching  and  distributing 
pamphlets;  his  words  have  an  electrical 
effect;  and  the  masses  of  the  uneducated 
and  half-educated  are  persuaded  that  they 
have  indeed  only  a  few  weeks  to  prepare  for 
the  day  of  Judgment.    Multitudes  leave  their 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  243 

occupations,  abandon  their  work,  in  order  to 
spend  the  short  time  that  remains  in  prayer 
and  listening  to  the  exhortations  of  the 
prophet.  The  country  is  paralyzed  by  the 
gigantic  strike;  traffic  and  industries  come  to 
a  standstill.  The  people  have  a  perfect  legal 
right  to  give  up  their  work,  and  the  prophet 
has  a  perfect  legal  right  to  propagate  his 
opinion  that  the  end  of  the  world  is  at  hand 
— an  opinion  which  Jesus  Christ  and  his  fol- 
lowers in  their  day  held  quite  as  erroneously. 
It  would  be  said  that  desperate  ills  have  des- 
perate remedies,  and  there  would  be  a  strong 
temptation  to  suppress  the  fanatic.  But  to 
arrest  a  man  who  is  not  breaking  the  law  or 
exhorting  any  one  to  break  it,  or  causing  a 
breach  of  the  peace,  would  be  an  act  of  glaring 
tyranny.  Many  will  hold  that  the  evil  of 
setting  back  the  clock  of  liberty  would  out- 
balance all  the  temporary  evils,  great  as  they 
might  be,  caused  by  the  propagation  of  a 
delusion.  It  would  be  absurd  to  deny  that 
liberty  of  speech  may  sometimes  cause  par- 
ticular harm.  Every  good  thing  sometimes 
does  harm.  Government,  for  instance,  which 
makes  fatal  mistakes;  law,  which  so  often 
bears  hardly  and  inequitably  in  individual 
cases.  And  can  the  Christians  urge  any 
other  plea  for  their  religion  when  they  are 
unpleasantly  reminded  that  it  has  caused  un- 


244  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

told  suffering  by  its  principle  of  exclusive 
salvation? 

Once  the  principle  of  liberty  of  thought  is 
accepted  as  a  supreme  condition  of  social 
progress,  it  passes  from  the  sphere  of  ordinary 
expediency  into  the  sphere  of  higher  expedi- 
ency which  we  call  justice.  In  other  words 
it  becomes  a  right  on  which  every  man  should 
be  able  to  count.  The  fact  that  this  right  is 
ultimately  based  on  utility  does  not  justify  a 
government  in  curtailing  it,  on  the  ground  of 
utility,  in  particular  cases. 

The  recent  rather  alarming  inflictions  of 
penalties  for  blasphemy  in  England  illustrate 
this  point.  It  was  commonly  supposed  that 
the  Blasphemy  laws  (see  above,  p.  139), 
though  unrepealed,  were  a  dead  letter.  But 
since  December,  1911,  half  a  dozen  persons 
have  been  imprisoned  for  this  offence.  In 
these  cases  Christian  doctrines  were  attacked 
by  poor  and  more  or  less  uneducated  persons 
in  language  which  may  be  described  as  coarse 
and  offensive.  Some  of  the  judges  seem  to 
have  taken  the  line  that  it  is  not  blasphemy 
to  attack  the  fundamental  doctrines  pro- 
vided "the  decencies  of  controversy"  are 
preserved,  but  that  "indecent"  attacks  con- 
stitute blasphemy.  This  implies  a  new  defi- 
nition of  legal  blasphemy,  and  is  entirely 
contrary  to  the  intention  of  the  laws.    Sir 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  245 

J.  F.  Stephen  pointed  out  that  the  decisions 
of  judges  from  the  time  of  Lord  Hale  (XVIIth 
century)  to  the  trial  of  Foote  (1883)  laid 
down  the  same  doctrine  and  based  it  on  the 
same  principle:  the  doctrine  being  that  it  is 
a  crime  either  to  deny  the  truth  of  the  fun- 
damental doctrines  of  the  Christian  religion 
or  to  hold  them  up  to  contempt  or  ridicule; 
and  the  principle  being  that  Christianity 
is  a  part  of  the  law  of  the  land. 

The  apology  offered  for  such  prosecutions 
is  that  their  object  is  to  protect  religious 
sentiment  from  insult  and  ridicule.  Sir  J.  F. 
Stephen  observed:  "If  the  law  were  really 
impartial  and  punished  blasphemy  onty, 
because  it  offends  the  feelings  of  believers, 
it  ought  also  to  punish  such  preaching  as 
offends  the  feelings  of  unbelievers.  All  the 
more  earnest  and  enthusiastic  forms  of  re- 
ligion are  extremely  offensive  to  those  who  do 
not  believe  them."  If  the  law  does  not  in 
any  sense  recognize  the  truth  of  Christian 
doctrine,  it  would  have  to  apply  the  same  rule 
to  the  Salvation  Army.  In  fact  the  law  "can 
be  explained  and  justified  only  on  what  I 
regard  as  its  true  principle — the  principle  of 
persecution."  The  opponents  of  Christianity 
may  justly  say:  If  Christianity  is  false,  why 
is  it  to  be  attacked  only  in  polite  language? 
Its  goodness  depends  on  its  truth.     If  you 


246  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

grant  its  falsehood,  you  cannot  maintain 
that  it  deserves  special  protection.  But  the 
law  imposes  no  restraint  on  the  Christian, 
however  offensive  his  teaching  may  be  to 
those  who  do  not  agree  with  him;  there- 
fore it  is  not  based  on  an  impartial  desire  to 
prevent  the  use  of  language  which  causes 
offence;  therefore  it  is  based  on  the  hypo- 
thesis that  Christianity  is  true;  and  therefore 
its  principle  is  persecution. 

Of  course,  the  present  administration  of 
the  common  law  in  regard  to  blasphemy  does 
not  endanger  the  liberty  of  those  unbelievers 
who  have  the  capacity  for  contributing  to 
progress.  But  it  violates  the  supreme  prin- 
ciple of  liberty  of  opinion  and  discussion. 
It  hinders  uneducated  people  from  saying 
in  the  only  ways  in  which  they  know  how 
to  say  it,  what  those  who  have  been  brought 
up  differently  say,  with  impunity,  far  more 
effectively  and  far  more  insidiously.  Some 
of  the  men  who  have  been  imprisoned  during 
the  last  two  years,  only  uttered  in  language 
of  deplorable  taste  views  that  are  expressed 
more  or  less  politely  in  books  which  are  in  the 
library  of  a  bishop  unless  he  is  a  very  ignorant 
person,  and  against  which  the  law,  if  it  has 
any  validity,  ought  to  have  been  enforced. 
Thus  the  law,  as  now  administered,  simply 
penalizes    bad    taste    and    places   disabili- 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  247 

ties  upon  uneducated  freethinkers.  If  their 
words  offend  their  audience  so  far  as  to  cause 
a  disturbance,  they  should  be  prosecuted  for 
a  breach  of  public  order,1  not  because  their 
words  are  blasphemous.  A  man  who  robs 
or  injures  a  church,  or  even  an  episcopal 
palace,  is  not  prosecuted  for  sacrilege,  but 
for  larceny  or  malicious  damage  or  something 
of  the  kind. 

The  abolition  of  penalties  for  blasphemy 
was  proposed  in  the  House  of  Commons  (by 
Bradlaugh)  in  1889  and  rejected.  The  reform 
is  urgently  needed.  It  would  "prevent  the 
recurrence  at  irregular  intervals  of  scandalous 
prosecutions  which  have  never  in  any  one 
instance  benefited  any  one,  least  of  all  the 
cause  which  they  were  intended  to  serve, 
and  which  sometimes  afford  a  channel  for 
the  gratification  of  private  malice  under  the 
cloak  of  religion."  2 

The  struggle  of  reason  against  authority 
has  ended  in  what  appears  now  to  be  a  de- 
cisive and  permanent  victory  for  liberty.  In 
the  most  civilized  and  progressive  countries, 
freedom   of   discussion   is   recognized    as    a 

1  Blasphemy  is  an  offence  in  Germany;  but  it  must  be 
proved  that  offence  has  actually  been  given,  and  the  penalty 
does  not  exceed  imprisonment  for  three  days. 

2  The  quotations  are  from  Sir  J.  F.  Stephen's  article, 
"Blasphemv  and  Blasphemous  Libel,"  in  the  Fortnightly 
Review.  March,  1884,  pp.  289-318. 


248  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

fundamental  principle.  In  fact,  we  may  say 
it  is  accepted  as  a  test  of  enlightenment,  and 
the  man  in  the  street  is  forward  in  acknowl- 
edging that  countries  like  Russia  and  Spain, 
where  opinion  is  more  or  less  fettered,  must 
on  that  account  be  considered  less  civilized 
than  their  neighbours.  All  intellectual  people 
who  count  take  it  for  granted  that  there  is 
no  subject  in  heaven  or  earth  which  ought 
not  to  be  investigated  without  any  deference 
or  reference  to  theological  assumptions.  No 
man  of  science  has  any  fear  of  publishing 
his  researches,  whatever  consequences  they 
may  involve  for  current  beliefs.  Criticism 
of  religious  doctrines  and  of  political  and  social 
institutions  is  free.  Hopeful  people  may  feel 
confident  that  the  victory  is  permanent; 
that  intellectual  freedom  is  now  assured  to 
mankind  as  a  possession  for  ever;  that  the 
future  will  see  the  collapse  of  those  forces 
which  still  work  against  it  and  its  gradual 
diffusion  in  the  more  backward  parts  of  the 
earth.  Yet  history  may  suggest  that  this 
prospect  is  not  assured.  Can  we  be  certain 
that  there  may  not  come  a  great  set-back? 
For  freedom  of  discussion  and  speculation 
was,  as  we  saw,  fully  realized  in  the  Greek 
and  Roman  world,  and  then  an  unforeseen 
force,  in  the  shape  of  Christianity,  came  in 
and  laid  chains  upon  the  human  mind  and 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  249 

suppressed  freedom  and  imposed  upon  man  a 
weary  struggle  to  recover  the  freedom  which 
he  had  lost.  Is  it  not  conceivable  that  some- 
thing of  the  same  kind  may  occur  again? 
that  some  new  force,  emerging  from  the  un- 
known, may  surprise  the  world  and  cause  a 
similar  set-back? 

The  possibility  cannot  be  denied,  but  there 
are  some  considerations  which  render  it  im- 
probable (apart  from  a  catastrophe  sweep- 
ing away  European  culture).  There  are 
certain  radical  differences  between  the  intel- 
lectual situation  now  and  in  antiquity.  The 
facts  known  to  the  Greeks  about  the  nature 
of  the  physical  universe  were  few.  Much 
that  was  taught  was  not  proved.  Compare 
what  they  knew  and  what  we  know  about 
astronomy  and  geography — to  take  the  two 
branches  in  which  (besides  mathematics) 
they  made  most  progress.  When  there  were 
so  few  demonstrated  facts  to  work  upon,  there 
was  the  widest  room  for  speculation.  Now 
to  suppress  a  number  of  rival  theories  in 
favour  of  one  is  a  very  different  thing  from 
suppressing  whole  systems  of  established 
facts.  If  one  school  of  astronomers  holds  that 
the  earth  goes  round  the  sun,  another  that 
the  sun  goes  round  the  earth,  but  neither  is 
able  to  demonstrate  its  proposition,  it  is  easy 
for  an  authority,  which  has  coercive  power, 


250  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT 

to  suppress  one  of  them  successfully.  But 
once  it  is  agreed  by  all  astronomers  that  the 
earth  goes  round  the  sun,  it  is  a  hopeless 
task  for  any  authority  to  compel  men  to 
accept  a  false  view.  In  short,  because  she 
is  in  possession  of  a  vast  mass  of  ascertained 
facts  about  the  nature  of  the  universe,  reason 
holds  a  much  stronger  position  now  than  at 
the  time  when  Christian  theology  led  her  cap- 
tive. All  these  facts  are  her  fortifications. 
Again,  it  is  difficult  to  see  what  can  arrest 
the  continuous  progress  of  knowledge  in 
the  future.  In  ancient  times  this  progress 
depended  on  a  few;  nowadays,  many  nations 
take  part  in  the  work.  A  general  convic- 
tion of  the  importance  of  science  prevails 
to-day,  which  did  not  prevail  in  Greece. 
And  the  circumstance  that  the  advance  of 
material  civilization  depends  on  science  is 
perhaps  a  practical  guarantee  that  scientific 
research  will  not  come  to  an  abrupt  halt. 
In  fact  science  is  now  a  social  institution, 
as  much  as  religion. 

But  if  science  seems  pretty  safe,  it  is  always 
possible  that  in  countries  where  the  scientific 
spirit  is  held  in  honour,  nevertheless,  serious 
restrictions  may  be  laid  on  speculations  touch- 
ing social,  political,  and  religious  questions. 
Russia  has  men  of  science  inferior  to  none, 
and  Russia  has  its  notorious  censorship.     It 


ITS  JUSTIFICATION  251 

is  by  no  means  inconceivable  that  in  lands 
where  opinion  is  now  free  coercion  might  be 
introduced.  If  a  revolutionary  social  move- 
ment prevailed,  led  by  men  inspired  by  faith 
in  formulas  (like  the  men  of  the  French 
Revolution)  and  resolved  to  impose  their 
creed,  experience  shows  that  coercion  would 
almost  inevitably  be  resorted  to.  Never- 
theless, while  it  would  be  silly  to  suppose  that 
attempts  may  not  be  made  in  the  future 
to  put  back  the  clock,  liberty  is  in  a  far  more 
favourable  position  now  than  under  the 
Roman  Empire.  For  at  that  time  the  social 
importance  of  freedom  of  opinion  was  not 
appreciated,  whereas  now,  in  consequence  of 
the  long  conflict  which  was  necessary  in  order 
to  re-establish  it,  men  consciously  realize  its 
value.  Perhaps  this  conviction  will  be  strong 
enough  to  resist  all  conspiracies  against 
liberty.  Meanwhile,  nothing  should  be  left 
undone  to  impress  upon  the  young  that  free- 
dom of  thought  is  an  axiom  of  human  progress. 
It  may  be  feared,  however,  that  this  is  not 
likely  to  be  done  for  a  long  time  to  come. 
For  our  methods  of  early  education  are 
founded  on  authority.  It  is  true  that  chil- 
dren are  sometimes  exhorted  to  think  for 
themselves.  But  the  parent  or  instructor 
who  gives  this  excellent  advice  is  confident 
that  the  results  of  the   child's  thinking  for 


252  FREEDOM  OP  THOUGHT 

himself  will  agree  with  the  opinions  which 
his  elders  consider  desirable.  It  is  assumed 
that  he  will  reason  from  principles  which  have 
already  been  instilled  into  him  by  author- 
ity. But  if  his  thinking  for  himself  takes  the 
form  of  questioning  these  principles,  whether 
moral  or  religious,  his  parents  and  teachers, 
unless  they  are  very  exceptional  persons,  will 
be  extremely  displeased,  and  will  certainly 
discourage  him.  It  is,  of  course,  only  sin- 
gularly promising  children  whose  freedom  of 
thought  will  go  so  far.  In  this  sense  it  might 
be  said  that  "distrust  thy  father  and  mother" 
is  the  first  commandment  with  promise.  It 
should  be  a  part  of  education  to  explain  to 
children,  as  soon  as  they  are  old  enough  to 
understand,  when  it  is  reasonable,  and  when 
it  is  not,  to  accept  what  they  are  told,  on 
authority. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

General 

Lecky,  W.  E.  H.,  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the 
Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  2  vols,  (originally  pub- 
lished in  1865).  White,  A.  D.,  A  History  of  the  Warfare 
of  Science  with  Theology  in  Christendom,  2  vols.,  1896. 
Robertson,  J.  M.,  A  Short  History  of  Free-thought,  Ancient 
and  Modern,  2  vols.,  1906.  [Comprehensive,  but  the 
notices  of  the  leading  freethinkers  are  necessarily  brief,  as 
the  field  covered  is  so  large.  The  judgments  are  always 
independent.]  Benn,  A.  W.,  The  History  of  English 
Rationalism  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  2  vols.,  1906. 
[Very  full  and  valuable.] 

Greek  Thought 
Gomperz,  Th.,  Greek  Thinkers  (English  translation),  4  vols. 
(1901-12). 

English  Deists 

Stephen,  Leslie,  History  of  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  vol.  i,  1881. 

French  Freethinkers  of  Eighteenth  Century 
Morley,    J.,     Voltaire;    Diderot    and    the    Encyclopaedists; 
Rousseau  (see  above,  Chapter  VI). 

Rationalistic  Criticism  of  the  Bible 
(Nineteenth  Century) 

Articles  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  4  vols.  Duff,  A.,  History  of 
Old  Testament  Criticism,  1910.  Contbeare,  F.  C,  His- 
tory of  New  Testament  Criticism,  1910. 

Persecution  and  Inquisition 
Lea,  H.,  A  History  of  the  Inquisition  of  the  Middle  Ages,  3 
vols.,  1888;  A  History  of  the  Inquisition  of  Spain,  4  vols., 
1906.  Haynes,  E.  S.  P.,  Religious  Persecution,  1904. 
For  the  case  of  Ferrer  see  Archer,  W.,  The  Life,  Trial 
and  Death  of  Francisco  Ferrer,  1911,  and  McCabe,  J., 
The  Martyrdom  of  Ferrer,  1909. 

Toleration 

Ruffini,  F.,  Religious  Liberty  (English  translation),  1912. 
The  essays  of  L.  Luzzatti.  Liberty  of  Conscience  and 
Science  (Italian),  are  suggestive. 

253 


INDEX 


Aesthetic  movement,  213 
Agnosticism,  meaning  of,  213  tq. 
Albigeois,  persecution  of,  56 
Anabaptists,  78,  95,  125 
Anatomy,  65 
Anaxagoras,  27 
Annet,  Peter,  172 
Anthropology,  189 
Anthropomorphism,  23 
Aristotle,  35,  68,  69 
Arnold,  Matthew,  218  tqq. 
Asoka,  92 
Astronomy,  87-90 
Atheism,  103,  113,  123,  132,  158 
Athens,  '27  tqq. 
Augustine,  St.,  55 
Austria-Hungary,  122,  224 
Authority,  meaning  of,  14  sqq. 
Averroism,  68 

Bacon,  Roger,  65 

Bahrdt,  175 

Bain,  A.,  188 

Bayle,  107  tq.,  135  tqq. 

Benn,  A.  W.,  152 

Bible,  O.  T.,  192  tqq.  ;   N.  T.,  195 

tqq. 
Bible-worship,  82,  201 
Blasphemy   laws,   28,   86,    139   tq., 

241  tqq. 
Bolingbroke,  153 
Bradlaugh,  224,  247 
Bruno,  Giordano,  84 
Buehner,  198 
Buckle,  188 
Butler,  Bishop,  Analogy,  151  tq. 

Calvin,  78  tq.,  94 
Cassels,  W.  R.,  213 
Castellion,  94 
Causation,  Law  of,  183  tq. 
Charron,  75 
Cicero,  39 

Clifford,  W.  K„  213 
Clodd,  Edward,  224 
Colenso,  Bishop,  193 
Collins,  Anthony,  141 
Comte,  Auguste,  186  tq.,  229 
Concordat  of  1801,  French,  115 


Condorcet,  227 

Congregationalists    (Independents), 

95,  99,  100 
Constantine  I,  Emperor,  47,  51 
Copernicus,  87 

Darwin;    Darwinism,  180,  182,  225 

Defoe,  Daniel,  104  tq. 

Deism,  137  tqq. 

Democritus,  25 

Descartes,  129,  131 

Design,  argument  from,  161,  176 

D'Holbach,  158 

Diderot,  158  tq. 

Diocletian,  Emperor,  45 

Disestablishment,  104,  106 

Dodwell,  Henry,  147 

Domitian,  Emperor,  42 

Double  Truth,  68  tq.,  134 

Edelmann,  175 

Epicureanism,  36  tqq.,  84 

Essays  and  Reviews,  204  tqq. 

Euripides,  29 

Exclusive  salvation,  52  tq.,  63,  78 

Ferrer,  Francisco,  231  tq. 
Fortnightly  Review,  221 
Fourier,  227 

France,  74,  106  tqq.,  152  tqq. 
Frederick  the  Great,  120  tq. 
Frederick  II,  Emperor,  58,  70 
Free  thought,  meaning  of,  18 

Galileo  de'  Galilei,  87  tqq. 

Gassendi,  130 

Geology,  178  tq. 

Germany,  76  tqq.,  117  tqq.,  174  tqq. 

Gibbon,  62,  162  sqq. 

Goethe,  175 

Greg,  W.  R.,  203 

Gregory  IX,  Pope,  57 

Gregory  XVI,  Encyclical  of,  123  tq. 

Haeckel,  187,  228 

Hale,  Lord  Chief  Justice,  139 

Harrison,  Frederic,  186,  223 

Hegel,  184  tqq. 

Hell,  controversy  on,  217 


254 


INDEX 


255 


Helmholtz,  182 

Heraclitus.  25 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  Lord,  149 

Hippocrates,  64 

Hobbes,  180  aq. 

Holland,  95,  107,  130,  181 

Holyoake,  224 

Homer,  24 

Hume,  160  aqq. 

Huxley,  213 

Independents,  95,  98  aq. 
Infallibility,  Papal,  210  aq. 
Innocent  III,  Pope,  56 
Innocent  IV,  Pope,  57 
Innocent  Mil.  Pope,  67 
Inquisition,  57  iqq.  ;    Spanish,   59 

aqq.  ;  Roman,  83,  84,  87  iqq. 
Italy,  122  aqq.,  210 

James  I  (England),  85  aq. 
Jews,  41  »9?.,  68,  99,  105,  111,  194 
Joseph  II,  Emperor,  122 
Jowett,  Benjamin,  204  »q. 
Julian,  Emperor,  54 
Justice,  arguments  from,  235 

Kant,  175  so. 
Kett,  Francis,  85 
Kyd,  85 

Laplace.  178 

Lecky,  W.  H„  208,  295 

Legate,  Bartholomsw,  86 

Leasing,  71,  120 

Linneus,  177 

Locke,  101  aqq.,  120,  182  iq. 

JLoisy,  Abbe1,  200  aq. 

Lucian,  40 

Lucretius,  87  aq. 

Luther,  77  aq.,  81 

I.yell,  178,  208 

Manning,  Cardinal,  210 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  85 
Marsilius,  119 
Maryland,  97  aq. 
Mazarin,  Cardinal,  85,  107 
Middleton,  Convers,  150,  164 
Mill,  James,  151,  227 
,  J.  S.,  182,  218,  227,  233,  235 

aqq. 
Milton,  99  aq. 
Mirabeau,  112 
Miracles,  141  aqq.,  151,  160,  164  aq., 

206 
Modernism,  199  aqq. 
Mohammedan  free  thought,  6$ 
Monism,  188,  228  aqq. 


Montaigne,  74 

Morley,  Lord  (Mr.  John),  169,  209, 
221  aq.,  225 

Nantes,  Edict  of,  107 
Napoleon  I,  115 
Newman,  Cardinal,  199,  241 
,  F.  W.,  203 

Ostwald,  Professor,  228  aqq. 

Paine,  Thomas,  112,  168  aqq. 

Paley,  167  aqq. 

Pascal,  128,  152  aq. 

Pater,  213 

Pentateuch,  192  aq. 

Pericles,  27 

Persecution,  theory  of,  47  tqq.,  232 

aqq. 
Pitt.  William,  151 
Pius  IX,  Syllabus,  210  aq. 
Pius  X,  Pope,  199  aq. 
Plato,  36  aq. 
Plutarch,  150 

Prayer,  controversy  on,  216 
Press,  censorship,  91  aq.,  224  aq. 
Priestley,  227 
Priscillian,  55 
Progress,  idea  of,  226  aqq. 
Protagoras,  28 

Raleigh,  Sir  W.,  85 
Rationalism,  meaning  of,  18 
Reade,  Winwood,  218 
Reinach,  S„  197 
Renan,  198 

Revolution,  French,  lit  aqq. 
Rhode  Island,  96 
Richelieu,  Cardinal,  85,  107 
Rousseau,  111,  156  aqq.,  289 
Ruffini,  Professor,  125 
Russia,  224 

Sacred  books,  24,  53  aq.,  191 
Science,  physical,  64  aq.,  176  aqq. 
Secularism,  224 
Seeley,  J.  R.,  208 
Servetus,  79 

Shaftesbury,  148  aqq.,  151 
Shelley,  173,  208 
Socinianism,  83,  93  aqq. 
Socrates,  30  aqq.,  39,  285,  236 
Sophists,  Greek,  26 
Spain,  59  aqq.,  231  aq. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  187 
Spinoza,  131  aq.,  138,  191 
Stephen/Leslie,  167,  215  aqq. 

,  J.  F.,  203.  245  aq.,  247 

Stoicism,  36,  88  aq. 


256 


INDEX 


Strauss,  David,  105,  108 
Swinburne,  208,  211  tq. 

Tamburini,  122 
Tatian,  44 
Themistius,  55 
Theodosius  I,  Emperor,  54 
Theophilanthropy,  114  tq. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  69 
Thomasius,  Chr,,  119 
Three  Rings,  story  of,  70 
Tiberius,  Emperor,  40 
Tindal,  Matthew,  144  tqq. 
Toland,  138  »q. 
Toleration,  46  tqq.,  92  tqq. 
Trajan,  Emperor,  42 
Turgot,  227 
Tyndall,  218 


Unitarians,  93,  105 
United  States,  96  tqq..  128 
Universities,  tests  at,  106 
Utilitarianism,  227 

Vanini,  Lucilio,  85 

Vatican  Council  (1889-70),  210 

Voltaire,  108  tqq.,  114,  121.  158  tqq. 

Wesley,  180 
Westbury,  Lord,  207 
Wilberforce,  201 
Williams,  Roger,  96  tq. 
Witchcraft,  68  tq.,  80,  129  tq. 
Woolston,  141  tqq. 

Xenophanes,  28  tq. 


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D.  Litt.  "One  of  the  100  most  important  books  of  1913." — 
/Ven>  York  Times  Review. 

45.  MEDIEVAL  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.  By  W.  P.  Ker,  Professor 
of  English  Literature,  University  College,  London.  "One  of  the 
soundest  scholars.  His  style  is  effective,  simple,  yet  never  dry." — 
The  Athenaeum. 

87.  THE  RENAISSANCE.  By  Edith  Sichel,  author  of  "Catherine  de 
Medici,"  "Men  and  Women  of  the  French  Renaissance." 

89.     ELIZABETHAN    LITERATURE.      By    J.    M.    Robertson,    M.    P., 

author  of  "Montaigne  and  Shakespeare,"  "Modern  Humanists." 

27.     MODERN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.    By  G.  H.  Mair.  From  Wyatt 

and  Surrey  to  Synge  and  Yeats.  "One  of  the  best  of  this  great 
series." — Chicago  Evening  Post. 

61.  THE  VICTORIAN  AGE  IN  LITERATURE.    By  G.  K.  Chesterton. 

40.  THE  ENGLISH  LANGUAGE.  By  L.  P.  Smith.  A  concise  history 
of  its  origin  and  development. 

66.  WRITING  ENGLISH  PROSE.  By  William  T.  Brewster,  Professo* 
of  English,  Columbia  University.  "Should  be  put  into  the  hands 
of  every  man  who  is  beginning  to  write  and  of  every  teacher  of 
English  that  has  brains  enough  to  understand  sense." — A'en>  Yor\ 
Sun. 

58.  THE  NEWSPAPER.  By  G.  Binney  Dibble.  The  first  full  account 
from  the  inside  of  newspaper  organization  as  it  exists  to-day. 

48.     GREAT  WRITERS   OF  AMERICA.     By  W.  P.  Trent  and  John 

Erskine,    Columbia  University. 

93.  AN  OUTLINE  OF  RUSSIAN  LITERATURE.  By  Maurice  Baring, 
author  of  "The  Russian  People,"  etc.  Tolstoi,  Tourgenieff, 
Dostoieffsky,  Pushkin  (the  father  of  Russian  Literature),  Salty- 
kov  (the    satirist,)    Leskov,   and   many   other   authors. 

31.     LANDMARKS  IN  FRENCH  LITERATURE.     By  G.  L.  Stracbey, 

Scholar  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge.  "It  is  difficult  to  imagine 
how  a  better  account  of  French  Literature  could  be  given  in  250 
pages." — London   Times. 

64.     THE  LITERATURE  OF  GERMANY.    By  J.  G.  Robertson. 

62.  PAINTERS  AND  PAINTING.  By  Sir  Frederick  Wedmore.  With 
16  half-tone   illustrations. 

38.  ARCHITECTURE.  By  Prof.  W.  R.  Lethaby.  An  introduction  to 
the  history  and  theory  of  the  art  of  building. 


NATURAL  SCIENCE. 

68.     DISEASE   AND   ITS   CAUSES.      By   W.   T.   Councilman,  M.  D., 

LL.  D.,  Professor  of  Pathology,  Harvard  University. 
85.      SEX.     By  J.  Arthur  Thompson  and  Patrick  Geddes,     joint     authors 
of  "The  Evolution  of  Sex." 

71.  PLANT  LIFE.  By  J.  B.  Farmer,  D.  Sc,  F.  R.  S.,  Professor  of  Bot- 
any in  the  Imperial  College  of  Science,  London.  This  very  fully 
illustrated  volume  contains  an  account  of  the  salient  features  of 
plant  form  and  function. 

63.  THE  ORIGIN  AND  NATURE  OF  LIFE.  By  Benjamin  M.  Moore, 
Professor  of  Bio-Chemistry,  Liverpool. 

90.  CHEMISTRY.  By  Raphael  Meldola,  F.  R.  S.,  Professor  of  Chem- 
istry, Finsbury  Technical  College.  Presents  the  way  in  which 
the  science  has  developed  and  the  stage  it  has  reached. 

53.  ELECTRICITY.  By  Gisbert  Kapp,  Professor  of  Electrical  En- 
gineering, University  of  Birmingham. 

54.  THE  MAKING  OF  THE  EARTH.  By  J.  W.  Gregory,  Professor  of 
Geology,  Glasgow  University.  38  maps  and  figures.  Describes 
the  origin  of  the  earth,  the  formation  and  changes  of  its  surface 
and  structure,  its  geological  history,  the  first  appearance  of  life, 
and  its  influence  upon  the  globe. 

56.     MAN:   A  HISTORY  OF  THE  HUMAN  BODY.  By  A.  Keith,  M.  D., 

Hunterian  Professor,  Royal  College  of  Surgeons,  London.     Shows 
how  the  human  body  developed. 

74.  NERVES.  By  David  Fraser  Harris,  M.  D.,  Professor  of  Physi- 
ology, Dalhousie  University,  Halifax.  Explains  in  non-technical 
language  the  place  and  powers  of  the  nervous  system. 

21.  AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  SCIENCE.  By  Prof.  J.  Arthur  Thomson, 
Science  Editor  of  the  Home  University  Library.  For  those  un- 
acquainted with  the  scientific  volumes  in  the  series,  this  would 
prove  an  excellent  introduction. 

14.     EVOLUTION.     By   Prof.   J.   Arthur  Thomson  and   Prof.   Patrick 

Geddes.      fc-xplains    to    the    layman    what   the   title    means    to    the 
scientific  world, 

23.  ASTRONOMY.  By  A.  R.  Hinks,  Chief  Assistant  at  the  Cam- 
bridge Observatory.  "Decidedly  original  in  substance,  and  the 
most  readable  and  informative  little  book  on  modern  astronomy 
we  have  seen  for  a  long  time." — Nature. 

24.  PSYCHICAL  RESEARCH.  By  Prof.  W.  F.  Barrett,  formerly  Pres- 
ident of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research. 

9.  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  PLANTS.  By  Dr.  D.  H.  Scott,  President 
of  the  Linnean  Society  of  London.  The  story  of  the  develop- 
ment of  flowering  plants,  from  the  earliest  zoological  times,  un- 
locked from  technical  language. 


43.  MATTER  AND  ENERGY.  By  F.  Soddy,  Lecturer  in  Physical 
Chemistry  and  Radioactivity,  University  of  Glasgow.  "Brilliant. 
Can  hardly  be  surpassed.  Sure  to  attract  attention." — ;Ven> 
York  Sun. 

41.  PSYCHOLOGY,  THE  STUDY  OF  BEHAVIOUR.    By  William  Mc 

Dougall,  of  Oxford.  A  well  digested  summary  of  the  essen- 
tials of  the  science  put  in  excellent  literary  form  by  a  leading 
authority. 

42.  THE  PRINCIPLES  OF  PHYSIOLOGY.    By  Prof.  J.  G.  McKendrick. 

A  compact  statement  by  the  Emeritus  Professor  at  Glasgow,  for 
uninstructed  readers. 

37.  ANTHROPOLOGY.  By  R.  R.  Marett,  Reader  in  Social  An- 
thropology, Oxford.  Seeks  to  plot  out  and  sum  up  the  general 
series  of  changes,  bodily  and  mental,  undergone  by  man  in  the 
course  of  history.  "Excellent.  So  enthusiastic,  so  clear  and  witty, 
and  so  well  adapted  to  the  general  reader." — American  Library 
Association  Booklist. 

17.  CRIME  AND  INSANITY.  By  Dr.  C.  Mercier,  author  of  "Test 
Book  of  Insanity,"  etc. 

12.     THE  ANIMAL  WORLD.    By  Prof.  F.  W.  Gamble. 

15.     INTRODUCTION   TO   MATHEMATICS.     By   A.   N.   Whitehead, 

author  of  "Universal  Algebra." 

PHILOSOPHY  AND  RELIGION. 


69.  A  HISTORY  OF  FREEDOM  OF  THOUGHT.  By  John  B.  Bury, 
M.  A.,  LL.  D.,  Regius  Professor  of  Modern  History  in  Cam- 
bridge University.  Summarizes  the  history  of  the  long  struggle 
between  authority  and  reason  and  of  the  emergence  of  the  prin- 
ciple that  coercion  of  opinion  is  a  mistake. 

96.  A  HISTORY  OF  PHILOSOPHY.  By  Clement  C.  J.  Webb, 
Oxford. 

35.     THE    PROBLEMS    OF    PHILOSOPHY.      By    Bertrand    Russell, 

Lecturer  and  Late  Fellow,  Trinity  College,  Cambridge. 

60.     COMPARATIVE    RELIGION.       By     Prof.    J.     Estlin    Carpenter. 

"One  of  the  few  authorities  on  this  subject  compares  all  the  re- 
ligions to  see  what  they  have  to  offer  on  the  great  themes  of  re- 
ligion."— Christian  Wor\  and  Evangelist. 

44.  BUDDHISM.  By  Mrs.  Rhys  Davids,  Lecturer  on  Indian  Philoso- 
phy, Manchester. 

46.     ENGLISH  SECTS:  A  HISTORY  OF  NONCONFORMITY.  By  W.  B. 

Selbie.      Principal    of   Manchester   College.  Ovford. 


55.  MISSIONS:  THEIR  RISE  AND  DEVELOPMENT.  By  Mrs.  Man- 
dell  Creighton,  author  of  "History  of  England."  The  author 
seeks  to  prove  that  missions  have  done  more  to  civilize  the  world 
than  any  other  human  agency. 

52.  ETHICS.  By  G.  E.  Moore,  Lecturer  in  Moral  Science,  Cam- 
bridge. Discusses  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  and  the  whys 
and  wherefores. 

65.     THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT.     By  George  F. 

Moore,  Professor  of  the  History  of  Religion,  Harvard  Uni- 
versity. "A  popular  work  of  the  highest  order.  Will  be  profit- 
able to  anybody  who  cares  enough  about  Bible  study  to  read  a 
serious  book  on  the  subject." — American  Journal  of  Theology. 

88.  RELIGIOUS  DEVELOPMENT  BETWEEN  OLD  AND  NEW  TESTA- 
MENTS. By  R.  H.  Charles,  Canon  of  Westminster.  Shows  how 
religious  and  ethical  thought  between  180  B.  C.  and  100  A.  D. 
grew  naturally  into  that  of  the  New  Testament. 

50.    THE  MAKING  OF  THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.     By  B.  W.  Bacon, 

Professor  of  New  Testament  Criticism,  Yale.  An  authoritative 
summary  of  the  results  of  modern  critical  research  with  regard  to 
the  origins  of  the  New  Testament. 

SOCIAL  SCIENCE. 

91.  THE  NEGRO.  By  W,  E.  Burghardt  DuBois,  author  of  "Souls  of 
Black  Folks,"  etc.  A  history  of  the  black  man  in  Africa, 
America  or  wherever  else  his  presence  has  been  or  is  important. 

77.  CO-PARTNERSHIP  AND  PROFIT  SHARING.  By  Aneurin  Wil- 
liams, Chairman,  Executive  Committee,  International  Co-opera- 
tive Alliance,  etc.  Explains  the  various  types  of  co-partnership 
or  profit-sharing,  or  both,  and  gives  details  of  the  arrangement* 
now  in    force   in   many  of   the  great   industries. 

W.  POLITICAL  THOUGHT:  THE  UTILITARIANS.  FROM  BENT- 
HAM  TO  J.  S.  MILL.    By  William  L.  P.  Davidson. 

98.  POLITICAL  THOUGHT:  FROM  HERBERT  SPENCER  TO  THE 
PRESENT  DAYc    By  Ernest  Barker,  M.  A. 

79.  UNEMPLOYMENT.  By  A.  C.  Pigou,  M.  A.,  Professor  of  Political 
Economy  at  Cambridge.  The  meaning,  measurement,  distribution, 
and  effects  of  unemployment,  its  relation  to  wages,  trade  fluctua- 
tions, and  disputes,  and  somp  proposals  of  rpmpdv  nr  »'<*l>'»f 


80.  COMMON-SENSE  IN  LAW.  By  Prof.  Paul  Vinogradoff.  D.  C.  L., 
LL.  D.  Social  and  Legal  Rules — Legal  Rights  and  Duties- 
Facts  and  Acts  in  Law — Legislation — Custom — Judicial  Prece- 
dents— Equity — The  Law  of  Nature. 

49.    ELEMENTS    OF    POLITICAL   ECONOMY.     By   S.   J.    Chapman, 

Professor  of  Political  Economy  and  Dean  of  Faculty  of  Com- 
merce and  Administration,  University  of  Manchester, 

11.  THE  SCIENCE  OF  WEALTH.  By  J.  A.  Hobson,  author  of  "Prob- 
lems of  Poverty."  A  study  of  the  structure  and  working  of  the 
modern  business  world. 

1.  PARLIAMENT.  ITS  HISTORY,  CONSTITUTION,  AND  PRAC- 
TICE. By  Sir  Courtenay  P.  Ilbert,  Clerk  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. 

16.  LIBERALISM.^  By  Prof.  L.  T.  Hobhouse,  author  of  "Democracy 
and  Reaction."  A  masterly  philosophical  and  historical  review  of 
the  subject. 

5.  THE  STOCK  EXCHANGE.  By  F.  W.  Hirst,  Editor  of  the  London 
Economist.  Reveals  to  the  non-financial  mind  the  facts  about 
investment,  speculation,  and  the  other  terms  which  the  title  sug- 
gests. 

10.     THE     SOCIALIST     MOVEMENT.       By     J.     Ramsay     Macdonald, 

Chairman  of   llie  British  Labor  Party. 

28.     THE    EVOLUTION    OF    INDUSTRY.      By    D.    H.    MacGregor, 

Professor  of  Political  Economy,  University  of  Leeds.  An  out- 
line of  the  recent  changes  that  have  given  us  the  present  conditions 
of  the  working  classes  and  the  principles  involved. 

:9.  ELEMENTS  OF  ENGLISH  LAW.  By  W.  M.  Geldart,  Vinerian 
Professor  of  English  Law,  Oxford.  A  simple  statement  of  the 
basic  principles  of  the  English  legal  system  on  which  that  of  the 
United  States  is  based. 

il.  THE  SCHOOL:  AN  INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  EDU- 
CATION. By  J.  J.  Findlay.  Professor  of  Education,  Manches- 
ter. Presents  the  history,  the  psychological  basis,  and  the  theory 
of  the  school  with  a  rare  power  of  summary  and  suggestion. 

6.  IRISH  NATIONALITY.  By  Mrs.  J.  R.  Green.  A  brilliant  account 
of  the  genius  and  mission  of  the  Irish  people.  "An  entrancing 
work,  and  I  would  advise  every  one  with  a  drop  of  Irish  blood 
in  his  veins  or  a  vein  of  Irish  sympathy  in  his  heart  to  read  it."— 
/v  pih    Yr>r\f   Times'   Rpvi«n> 


GENERAL  HISTORY  AND  GEOGRAPHY. 

102.   SERBIA.     By  L.    F.   Waring,    with  preface  by  J.  M.  Jovanovitch, 

Serbian  Minister  to  Great  Britain.  The  main  outlines  of  Serbian 
history,  with  special  emphasis  on  the  immediate  causes  of  the  war, 
and  the  questions  which  will  be  of  greatest  importance  in  the  after- 
the-war  settlement. 

33.  THE  HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.  By  A.  F.  Pollard,  Professor  of 
English  History,  University  of  London. 

95.  BELGIUM.  By  R.  C.  K.  Ensor,  Sometime  Scholar  of  Balliol 
College.  The  geographical,  linguistic,  historical,  artistic  and  lit- 
c:ary  associations. 

99.  POLAND.  By  W.  Alison  Phillips,  University  of  Dublin.  The 
histo.y  of  Poland  with  special  emphasis  upon  the  Polish  question 
of  (he  present  day. 

34.  CANADA.    By  A.  G.  Bradley. 

72.     GERMANY  OF  TO-DAY.    By  Charles  Tower. 

78.  LATIN  AMERICA.  By  William  R.  Shepherd,  Professor  of  His- 
tory, Columbia.  With  maps.  The  historical,  artistic,  and  com- 
mercial development  of  the  Central  South  American  republics. 

18.  THE    OPENING-UP    OF    AFRICA.      By    Sir    H.    H.    Johnston. 

19.  THE  CIVILIZATION  OF  CHINA.    By  H.  A.  Giles,    Professor  of 

Chinese,  Cambridge. 

36.     PEOPLES  AND  PROBLEMS  OF  INDIA.    By  Sir  T.  W.  Holderness. 

"The  best  small  treatise  dealing  with  the  range  of  subjects  fairly 
indicated  by  the   title." — The  Dial. 

26.  THE  DAWN  OF  HISTORY.  By  J.  L.  Myers,  Professor  of  Ancient 
History,  Oxford. 

92.     THE   ANCIENT  EAST.     By  D.   G.  Hogarth,  M.   A.,   F.  B.   A., 

F.  S.  A.  Connects  with  Prof.  Myers's  "Dawn  of  History"  (No. 
26)  at  about  1000  B.  C.  and  reviews  the  history  of  Assyria, 
Babylon,  Cilicia,  Persia  and  Macedon. 

30.     ROME.     By  W.  Warde  Fowler,    author  of  "Social  Life  at  Rome," 

etc. 

13.  MEDIEVAL  EUROPE.  By  H.  W.  C.  Davis,  Fellow  at  Balliol  Col- 
lege,  Oxford,  author  of  "Charlemagne,"  etc. 

3.     THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     By  Hillaire  Belloc. 
57.     NAPOLEON.     By  H.  A.  L.  Fisher,    Vice-Chancellor  of  Sheffield 
University.      Author   of   "The   Republican  Tradition   in   Europe." 

20.  HISTORY    OF    OUR    TIME    (1885-1911).      By    C.    P.    Gooch. 
22.     THE  PAPACY  AND  MODERN  TIMES.     By  Rev.  William  Barry, 

D.  D.,  author  of  "The  Papal  Monarchy,"  etc.  The  story  of  the 
rise  and  fall  of  the  Temporal  Power. 


4.     A  SHORT  flISTORY  OF  WAR  AND  PEACE.     By  G.  H.  Perrit. 

author  of  "Russia  in  Revolution,"  etc. 

94.  THE  NAVY  AND  SEA  POWER.  By  David  Hannay,  author  of 
"Short  History  of  the  Royal  Navy,"  etc.  A  brief  history  of  the 
navies,  sea  power,  and  ship  growth  of  all  nations,  including  the 
rise  and  decline  of  America  on  the  sea,  and  explaining  the 
present  British  supremacy  thereon. 

«.  POLAR  EXPLORATION.  By  Dr.  W.  S.  Bruce,  Leader  of  the 
"Scotia"  expedition.     Emphasizes  the  results  of  the  expeditions. 

51.  MASTER  MARINERS.  By  John  R.  Spears,  author  of  "The  His- 
tory of  Our  Navy,"  etc.  A  history  of  sea  craft  adventure  from 
the  earliest  times. 

86.     EXPLORATION  OF  THE  ALPS.    By  Arnold  Lunn,  M.  A. 

7.  MODERN  GEOGRAPHY.  By  Dr.  Marion  Newbigin,  Shows  the  re- 
lation  of  physical  features  to  living  things  and  to  some  of  the 
chief  institutions  of  civilization. 

76.  THE  OCEAN.  A  GENERAL  ACCOUNT  OF  THE  SCIENCE  OF 
THE  SEA.  By  Sir  John  Murray,  K.  C.  B.,  Naturalist  H.  M.  S. 
"Challenger,"  1872-1876,  joint  author  of  "The  Depths  of  the 
Ocean,"  etc. 

84.  THE  GROWTH  OF  EUROPE.  By  Granville  Cole,  Professor  of 
Geology,  Royal  College  of  Science,  Ireland.  A  study  of  the 
geology  and  physical  geography  in  connection  with  the  political 
geography. 

AMERICAN  HISTORY. 

47.  THE  COLONIAL  PERIOD  (1607-1766).  By  Charles  McLean  An- 
drews,    Professor  of  American  History,  Yale. 

82.  THE  WARS  BETWEEN  ENGLAND  AND  AMERICA  (1763-1815). 
By  Theodore  C.  Smith,  Professor  of  American  History,  Wil- 
liams College.  A  history  of  the  period,  with  especial  emphasis 
on  The  Revolution  and  The  War  of  1812. 

67.  FROM  JEFFERSON  TO  LINCOLN  (1815-1860).  By  William 
MacDonald,  Professor  of  History,  Brown  University.  The 
author  makes  the  history  of  this  period  circulate  about  constitu- 
tional ideas  and  slavery  sentiment. 

25.     THE     CIVIL     WAR     (1854-1865.)       By     Frederic     L.     Paxson, 

Professor  of  American  History,  University  of  Wisconsin. 

39.  RECONSTRUCTION  AND  UNION  (1865-1912).  By  Paul  Lel.nd 
Haworth.     A  History  of  the  United  States  in  our  own  times. 

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